MAN 

GOD'S MASTERPIECE 



FRANK CROWELL 




Class 

Book 

Copyright}^". 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



/ 



MAN- . 

God's Masterpiece 



BY 

FRANK CROWELL 

Author of ** How to Forecast Business and Commercial Conditions." 



R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 

18 East 17th Street, New York 



)fA 






Copyright. 1916, 

By K. F. FENNO & COMPANY 



Man — God's Masterpiece 



ii 



APR -5 1916 



a.A4284(3l 



MAN — God's Masterpiece 



n 



A ^re-mist and a planet^ a crystal^ cmd a cell ; 
A jelly Jish and a saurian^ and caves where the 

cave men dwell ; 
Then a sense of law and heauty^ and a face turned 

from the clod 
Some call it evolution and others call it God^ 



INTRODUCTION 



As soon as possible in life one should ask of him- 
self the question, ''Why am I here?" And when 
he has found the correct answer, he should follow 
it up diligently if he w^ould know happiness. A 
proper viewpoint is everything in life for it enables 
us to seek out the law and comply with it. This 
book attempts to give that answer and to point out 
the way as well. It tells of health, happiness and 
salvation to be attained now, not in some distant, 
uncertain future. It teaches the religion of Christ 
freed from dogma and creed. It should not be read 
continuously but taken up from time to time and 
quietly perused. One should read it through first, 
omitting the notes, so as to get the trend of thought, 
and a second time with the notes. It should be re- 
read, and favored passages marked. 

I deplore the fact that when I collected my data I 
had no idea of writing a book and so in several 
instances where I have made a quotation I have 
been unable to give the author's name; also that I 
have had to omit so many really valuable notes. 

vii 



viii Introduction 

I claim that this interpretation of religion founded 
as it is on a philosophical and scientific basis, will 
increase greatly one's powers to meet the require- 
ments of every-day life, in all its aspects, from a 
business, social and religious standpoint, and will 
accomplish results. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 



CHAPTER I 

In the beginning " was the word," and the word 
was God, later on, a burning mass with no appear- 
ance of vegetable or animal life. After millions 
of years the sphere had become sufificiently cooled 
to allow of a solid formation, a chaos of barren 
rocks, bleak, bare and forbidding, surrounded by a 
stifling atmosphere and surging clouds. Later on 
water was deposited from the surrounding vapor, 
introducing with it organized life, when the temper- 
ature was suitable, and when its basic elements, 
water and carbon dioxide, were at hand. But 
through it all, as it proceeds, we recognize the work- 
ings of a master mind, and we trace it developing 
into the present beautiful world, becoming ever more 
and more spiritual, and better fitted as an abode for 
man, who likewise is daily becoming more refined; 
and, as the spirit asserts its dominancy, will earth 
and man become more attractive and lovable. 

9 



lo Man — God's Masterpiece 

When at last man arrived * he was very v^eak and 
defenseless, compared v^ith many of the larger ani- 
mals and from all outward appearances, no one at 
that time would have conceived him to be the future 
ruler of all animal life, — this coward who lived in 
constant fear of larger animals, of the convulsions of 
nature, and of his own kind as well. In the New 
York Museum of Natural History is a brontassaur 
sixty-six feet long and weighing in life forty thou- 
sand pounds, and out west is another more than 
twice as large as this one ; yet insignificant man, us- 
ing really only one-thousandth part of his brain, has 
proven the superior of them all. What may he be- 

* Man came from a species of manlike apes at tHe end of 
the Tertiary Period. The Riddle of the Universe, Haeckel, 
p. 14. " The differences between man and the great apes, 
are not as great as those between the manlike apes and the 
lower monkeys." Ibid, p. 70. " The fossil ape-man of 
Java is the much sought missing link." Ibid, p. 87. " The 
fact that man has all the equipment necessary to wag a 
tail, is evidence of his involution from the ape." Prof. El- 
liott Downing, Asst. Prof. Chicago University, says, " Man 
has one hundred and ninety-eight bits of organism that he 
once made use of," for instance, " in man the third eyelid 
is readily seen as a minute scale," serving no purpose what- 
ever. Why is the nodule of bone in the arm where it can 
be of no possible use, etc., etc. Arcana of Nature, Tuttle, 
p. 240. Outside of his morality and spirituality, man is or- 
ganically and functionally an animal. His embryonic 
growth proves this, he " commences at the foot of the scale, 
and advances over the whole vast interval that life has 
traversed since its early dawn." "Man at first is a 



Man — God's Masterpiece ii 

come when he utilizes all his brain power and acts in 
conjunction with God? 

His very weakness, however, was one of the great 
causes of his future supremacy, and fortunately for 
him, the form of his body was the best suited 
of any for mental expression, for the upright po- 
sition and the dexterous hands were absolutely 
necessary for the part assigned him, as the fire- 
making, tool-using animal who was to make all 
nature subservient to him. Had he been equally 
as strong as the mammoth or the mastodon, he 
would not have needed to use, and thereby de- 
velop so greatly the intelligence which at this time 
was dormant and undeveloped. But the very fact 
that he was so weak called for the utmost exercise 
of his brains; in order to survive. And thus he 
struggled on, supported by some great power from 
within, unrecognized and unknown to him, until fin- 
zoophyte; the embryo is a confused gelatinous body, with- 
out the least appearance of different organs. Gradually, 
this primordial model is transformed, first to the rank of 
fish, not agreeing in external form, it is true, but in the 
conformation of its brain, its nervous and circulating sys- 
tems. It next ascends to the rank of reptiles, then to that 
of mammal, and lastly its brain is still farther developed 
and it arises to the grade of a human being." " In him are 
combined zoophyte, fish, reptile, and mammal, and he 
acknowledges this relationship in bone and muscle, in di- 
gestion, nutrition and reproduction." Ibid, p. 239. He has 
been the mystery of the ages only to be exceeded by the 
mystery of God himself. 



12 Man — God's Masterpiece 

ally he came through triumphant, one to whom all 
nature pays tribute. The fruitage of the world's 
cycle of labor is man. 

Man, being the greatest work of an all-power- 
ful God, must necessarily be great, and to assert 
that that work perishes with death, is to deny 
the greatness of the God that made him; no one 
willingly destroys his greatest work; it is natural 
to cherish and improve it. *'A11 the causes of nature 
may be traced as producing finally but one effect 
and that effect is man." He is her excuse for exist- 
ing. Genesis says, '' Man is given dominion and 
power over all things." ^ Man in the beginning ap- 
peared as a monad, a simple cell in the form of a 
stomach. Filled with protoplasmic life, the basis of 
all organic life, having a mind with just sufficient 
intelligence to suck in food from the surrounding 
waters and to reject that which was unusable. Orig- 
inally, he was bi-sexual, which may in part account 
for the intense attraction of the sexes, and may 
possibly forecast the union of the two in some future 
stage of evolution. The scientist says God must 

* John Fiske, in A Century of Science, says, " It then be- 
gan to appear that not only is man the terminal factor in a 
long process of evolution, but in the origination of man 
there began the development of the higher psychical attri- 
butes, and these attributes are coming to play a greater part 
in human development." Can such a being, then, have 
aught but a glorious future? All this, it is needless to say, 
has taken untold ages to effect. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 13 

have the qualities of both father and mother, and 
most of the great religions portray him as such. 
The Bhagarat Gita says : ''I am the father, mother, 
sustainer and grandsire of this universe." This cell 
was propogated by a division into two cells similar 
to the parent. From this beginning, man passed 
through various stages, as low organized fishes, kan- 
garoo-like marsupalia, etc.,* until finally we find 
him a fully developed ape, apparently with nothing 
to distinguish him positively from other apes. Then 
he became a savage, and later on half civilized. His 
intellect was but developed instinct, his desires and 
aspirations at this stage partook of the brute from 
which he had arisen, and it was only his assertion 
of individualism that gave him supremacy. 

John Fiske says, '' In the order of evolution 
man appeared when a primitive being became aware 
of and asserted self -consciousness. This first recog- 
nized ego sprang from the lowest plane of con- 
sciousness or intellect, but its assertion of indi- 
vidualism gave man supremacy over the animal 
life surrounding." Professor Eliot Smith, of Man- 
chester University, in an address to the British 
Association, says, *^ There is now ample evidence 
for drawing up a pedigree for man as far back 
as a million years or so. The steady develop- 
ment of the brain must give a fundamental rea- 
son for man's ascent from the ape, the ancestor 

* Ernest HaeckeL 



14 Man — God's Masterpiece 

of which was a small, land-grubbing, insectivorous 
animal, whose sense of smell was more serviceable 
than all its other senses, and which took to life in the 
trees, becoming a squirrel-like creature. The step 
marked the birth of the primates; i.e., the highest 
order of mammals, including man, apes, and mon- 
keys, and the definite branching off from other mam- 
mals of the line of man's ancestors. . . . The grad- 
ual development of the brain went on and resulted in 
the power to anticipate the consequences of action. 
The erect attitude became the normal attitude, and 
the hands were free to be used for useful pur- 
poses. . . . Legs were developed, for without fleet- 
ness of foot there would have been no escape from 
threatened danger." 

Biologists say there is life and mind in every 
tell that enters into the make-up of plant and animal 
life. The most advanced among their number go 
further and claim that even inorganic matter has 
life,* and is dominated by mind, and their numbers 

* Lord Kelvin says, in Molecular Dynamic and Wave 
Thought of Life : *' Not only within and beyond the proto- 
plasmic cell is there divine life and energy, not only is 
evolution mysteriously related to an infinite and spiritual 
involution, with a spiritual germ primary and the material 
germ secondary, and the phenomenal product thereof, but 
everything, even the hardest, most complex solids are com- 
posed of tiny moving particles, in a constant state of rapid 
vibration, and as distinct from one another as are the in- 
dividual material forms of which these are composed." See 
Mind, Health and Religion, by R. MacDonald. Francis 



Man — God's Masterpiece 15 

have been greatly augmented by the discovery of 
the qualities of radium, showing that there is life 
and change going on in what we have heretofore 
considered the unchangeable rocks. Dr. Lehrman, 
of Germany, has obtained crystals that even remain 
liquid at ordinary temperatures. These crystals also 
grow, just as do the leaves of a tree. It is one of 
the dramatic incidents of this new discovery to find 
that non-living matter, such as crystals, grows and 
multiplies just as vital phenomena does. A French 
scientist now claims that pearls have life in the 
shell. Prof. L. J. Henderson, of Harvard, after ten 
years devoted to this particular study, says that ''in- 
organic matter contains latent life." Tesla says that 
*' inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants 
and gives unmistakable evidence of the presence of 
a living principle within." 

As far back as we can trace him, man was a social 
animal and lived more or less gregariously. Isolate 

Darwin, in his inaugural address as President of the Brit- 
ish Association for the Advancement of Science, said : ''In 
all living things there is something psychic, and in plants 
there is a faint copy of what we know as consciousness in 
ourselves." Botanists agree that " the movement of plants 
cannot all be explained by the action of mechanical forces." 
Natural History of Religious Feeling, p. 5, Corneleson Royal 
Dixon says : " plants have seven senses, sight, hearing, feel- 
ing, taste, smell, a psychic sense, and a physical sense. 
They have eyes, mouths, stomachs, and lungs, and, being 
organisms, they actually mate," Current Opinion, March, 
1915, 



i6 Man — God's Masterpiece 

man and he finally loses his power of speech and 
with it most of his reasoning faculties; therefore, of 
all animals he is the most gregarious. We find evi- 
dence of this in his caves, as in his flints, cooking 
utensils, etc. The institution of the family came 
later.* Man is related to the earth for his body 
contains all the elements that exist on earth, as well 
as in the heavens above. While on the animal plane 
of existence, man recognized only his right to live, 
and the necessities of his physical nature demanded 
that his whole time and attention should be concen- 
trated in sustaining life in his body. Hence selfish- 
ness predominated, for all the intellectual processes 
he had then evolved were only sufficient for the satis- 
faction of his daily wants. His mind was feeble, 
very feeble, a mere flickering of understanding, and 
it needed the imperative demand for food, water, 
and protection from the elements to bring it into 
action. But this all pertained to self and therefore 
bred, as we have stated, a state of selfishness, pure 
and simple, BUT it was right and proper then, was 
the law of God in fact. '' So we find that self-preser- 
vation is almost exclusively the unconscious object 
of all childish utterances." f Yet it was out of sel- 
fishness that virtue grew, for we designate good and 
bad as that which is for or against our ultimate 

♦ See writings of Darwin, Kropotkin, Backof ten, Morgan, 
Lubbeek, etc. 
t Child and Child Nature, p. 20, Buelow. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 17 

good. When further extended, it leads logically to 
altruism and brotherhood. 

Man's senses then were no better than those of 
many of the animals around him but he used his 
brain to better advantage than they * in utilizing the 
information received through those senses. As man 
developed, his wants increased and he also showed a 
preference for certain foods, and finally a desire for 
pleasure set in. A decided change, this, from the 
primitive cell which simply closed on what was 
wafted within its mouth. It was through the pur- 
suit of pleasure that man helped to develop him- 
self, as many animals probably do at the present 
time. '^ The domestic dog and cat, doing no work, 
must mainly depend on pleasure for advancement. 
The play of children — and of animals — is for them 
at the same time the same as work, for it serves to 
develop their members, senses, and organs." f 
Work, however, has always been the main source of 
development. 

Science informs us that for ages the sense of 
touch was the only one developed, at first very im- 
perfectly, but with use becoming more proficient as 
the being progressed in his evolution, and as this 

* " Recent studies, suggesting that the human brain has 
not increased in average size for twenty thousand years or 
more, also point to improvement in cerebral organization 
as the distinctive feature of the civilized brain." American 
Journal of Insanity, LVLII, p. 1. See Mind in the Making, 
Swift. t Buelow. 



1 8 Man — God's Masterpiece 

proceeded the other senses developed as needed. 
Seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting are the results 
of vibrations that strike the delicate mechanism 
made to receive and detect them. *' Step by step in 
the upward advance towards humanity the environ- 
ment has enlarged. Every step of enlargement has 
had reference to actual existence outside. The eye 
developed in response to the outside existence of 
radiant life; the ear in response to the outward ex- 
istence of acoustic vibrations. The mother's love 
came in response to the infant's needs. Fidelity, 
honor, were slowly developed as the nascent social 
life required them. Everywhere the internal adjust- 
ment has been brought about so as to harmonize with 
actually existing external fact." ^ All, as we see, 
modifications of the sense of touch. At first, and 
for ages, we progressed by the exercise of uncon- 
scious thought '' That race memory called instinct " 
was our guide, until our senses (proceeding in the 
individual by his recognition of his own desires) 
became sufficiently developed so that we could grow 
on the plane of conscious thought, when intellect 
superseded instinct, and with it came the power of 
choice between good and evil. " First like the brute, 
obliged by facts to learn, next, as man may, obliged 
by his own mind, bent, habit, nature, knowledge 
turned to law." f 

* John Fiske, Through Nature to God, pp. 186-187. 
t Robert Browning. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 19 

An advance from the plane of sensation to sim- 
ple consciousness and then to the plane of indi- 
vidual self-consciousness, with those steps forward 
came the desire for self -advancement and the con- 
trol of his own fate, the power of self-direction, 
or the will, as we call it. This will by constant 
use will in time become invincible, and will then 
occupy the position of high priest of the moral 
self; the soul itself exercising self-direction.* " All 
growth depends upon the recognition of the law ; but 
nothing, and no man, can recognize the law in its 
fulness. Man only recognizes the law in himself, 
as it is expressed in desire." f At this stage he be- 
gins to realize that there must be some cause for 
what he sees ; realizing it to be a higher power than 
his, he worships it, and so religion has its inception 
in his mind. 

Prior to the dawn of consciousness, which came 
only after ages of experience, man was, as we have 
stated, at the mercy of the elements. He even had 
to touch things in order to help him understand 
their nature relatively to himself, like the baby, 
whom he strongly resembled intellectually. Like 
all organic substances, his evolution had progressed 
through an unconscious pushing from behind, ac- 
companied by friction, but thenceforth he began to 
command the situation. He was able to do this in 

* Power of WiU, by F. C. Haddock. 
t Riches, August, 1914. 



20 Man — God's Masterpiece 

only a very small way at first, swayed more or less 
by his inherited animal passions and appetites, but 
his mastery constantly increased as his intellect ex- 
panded. 

From this time on his progress became much 
more rapid, as he was no longer a slave to environ- 
ment. He himself was now able to co-operate in 
the work of his own evolution, to seek out the law 
and obey it. '^ Man developed construction for 
utilitarian purposes only at first, but later on came 
a longing for the beautiful and so art developed and 
all the time he patterned after nature.'' Later on, as 
he developed further, he conceived ideals, and, in try- 
ing to live up to them, greatly facilitated his progress. 

During the period of unconscious growth, selfish- 
ness ruled, for our desires were then paramount. 
To maintain existence was all man could possibly do 
in the early stages of his existence. But with con- 
scious growth, the necessity of uniting with our 
fellows for defense, and later on for material ad- 
vancement, came, and with it gradually a recog- 
nition of their rights, grudgingly conceded (and 
often withdrawn), in order to preserve that union, 
though not on any moral grounds. Altruism now 
had its birth in an enlarged egoism.* We needed 
his aid and this was the price we had to pay for it. 
Our growing intelligence also allowed us more time 

* " Altruism begins with self." Power of Will, p. 37, F. C. 
Haddoei^ 



Man — God's Masterpiece 21 

to develop our ideals, such as they then were.* So 
we took the first step towards eradicating selfish- 
ness, for progress demands its limitation, and finally, 
as we progress further, its entire extinction for its 
usefulness has ceased, for all sin is bred out of 
selfishness, sired by ignorance and ever exacts a 
penalty, but it only exists when we reach a higher 
plane where the idea of love for others has entered 
into our lives, and commands finally a crucifixion 
of self-desires with its accompanying pain and sin- 
ning — so-called, and which represents really the fric- 
tion between the two antagonistic ideas. 

Later on, as we needed his aid and services more, 
especially as business transactions increased, we ac- 
corded to our fellow-man the same rights we en- 
joyed ourselves, and also surrendered certain rights 
we had hitherto exercised, such as private vengeance 
and the like. The writer considers capital punish- 
ment as unwarranted, for, as above stated, man, 
v/hen he entered into social relations, gave up or 
lost certain rights which he had hitherto enjoyed, 
but, as he never had any right to take his own life, 
he could not convey that right to others, especially 
as society's safety would be amply safeguarded by 
a life imprisonment of the oflfender. The fact that 
this pardoning power may be abused should not 

* ** The problem of this world is an educational one, the 
solution of which is proceeding according to fixed divine 
laws." Child and Child Nature, Buelow. 



22 Man — God's Masterpiece 

be allowed to affect his rights. These privileges we 
extended only to our neighbors at first, and then 
to the tribe, but afterwards to the nation as well, 
when the latter sprang into existence. Out of this 
union grew modern civilization and the great in- 
dustrial triumphs of the ages, which are all founded 
on intelligent co-operation. 

Later, an early recognized tie was that of clan- 
hood, the basis of which was a blood relationship. 
This was succeeded in Europe by feudalism, and 
this in turn by a central government. It was im- 
possible for man, at first, living by fishing and hunt- 
ing, to assemble in large communities. That came 
later on, when he had organized industries, and 
therefore mutual interests. Agriculture preceded 
and accompanied civilization. Instinct, that main 
reliance of primitive man and animals, is much more 
exact in the lower order of intelligence, but reason 
is capable of indefinite development, whereas in- 
stinct is not. Reason involves a power of choosing, 
and therefore indicates a higher stage of evolution, 
and it is to this stage that he has now reached. In- 
spiration is on a still higher plane than intellect, as 
it comes direct from the spirit and is therefore ab- 
solutely correct. Bergson says that we have within 
us a power greater than intellect, which he calls 
intuition, which allows us to see into the very na- 
ture of life and existence.* The possession of this 

* New Alignment of Life, by Trine. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 23 

power enables us to take an active part in our own 
unfoldment or evolution. 

Henry Wood, in Living Universe, says, " Adam 
and Eve were the types used to designate that 
transitional stage which lies between instinct and 
reason. Pre-Adamic man was an animal, brutish, 
and lived naked in caves. The fall was a pas- 
sage from irresponsibility, from blind animal pas- 
sivity, to the knowledge and choice of good and 
evil. Heretofore, he had been satisfied with the 
gratification merely of his animal wants; now he 
awoke to the spiritual consciousness of the God 
within. The Devil says * ' For God doth know 
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall 
be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good 
and evil.' f '' The resurrection was the uplifting of 
the consciousness from the physical to the spiritual 
plane. This transformation from instinct to reason 
was a rise, but as contrasted with the uniform ex- 
actness of former instinct, made it appear to be a 
veritable fall. The apple represented the knowledge 
of good and evil." The idea of Paradise depicted 
as a beautiful valley with its lovely garden may 
have had its origin and growth in Egypt where so 

* Genesis, 3 : 5. 

t Genesis, 3 : 22, 23. " And the Lord God said, Behold the 
man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and 
now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree 
of life and eat, and live forever: Therefore, the Lord God 
sent him forth from the Garden of Eden." 



i4 Man — God's Masterpiece 

much of our religions came from. Students claim 
that to Egypt with its rich valley of the Nile, and 
to Babylon with its valley of the Euphrates, both 
agricultural countries, the idea of an earthly para- 
dise naturally would be a rich valley where wealth 
and happiness prevailed. 

Everything man did or thought was first regis- 
tered in mental pictures, so it was natural that his 
first written language should be pictorial, and such 
we find it to be in the caves, which were occupied by 
primitive man in France and elsewhere. His first 
artistic talents were exercised in the adornment and 
mutilation of his body. He was incapable of gen- 
eral conceptions, had no name for tree or color, or 
even for the whole of the island he inhabited. It 
was beyond his capabilities.* He was a veritable 
savage, as is evidenced by the fact that the skulls of 
his female companions are often cracked, showing 
that they had incurred his displeasure, or had be- 
come too old to be of further use to him. As late 
as January, 1914, an old woman one hundred and 
fourteen years old was abandoned and left to die in 
the Pacific Northwest by her Indian companions. 

At this period, while the man was out hunting, 
his mate, the woman,t was at home, and, as her 

* Religion in the Making, p. 60, Smith. 

t " All nature submits to the universal law of marriage, 
in plant as well as in animal life, love and the creative in- 
stincts are alike, the most powerful and universal forces 
in nature." 



Man — God's Masterpiece 25 

duties there were light, she was probably at a loss 
how to utilize her spare time. So she it was, who 
planted seeds or transplanted plants for the benefit 
of the household, and hence we have no gods, but 
goddesses, of agriculture. When agriculture was 
introduced, the people became less warlike, for their 
necessity to hunt over the enemy's country was not 
as great, much of their food being now raised from 
the ground. It also made them less cruel, for they 
found it to their advantage to enslave the enemy 
rather than kill him. Thus slavery, when intro- 
duced, although having its birth in expediency, was 
a lesser form of good as compared to the alternative 
of death. It was a relative good, as all things good 
and evil are as we know them, the only absolute 
good residing in God. Man, as long as he remained 
a hunter or a shepherd, was a slave to nature, but he 
attained more or less freedom when he became a 
tiller of the soil and a manufacturer, as he then 
to a certain extent commanded the situation.* 
Woman, also, being lonely, found a means of com- 

* At first lie built along the banks of rivers, especially 
later on as it afforded him an easy means of transportation 
and of access to his fellows. Still later on, he started his 
towns along river banks and the railroads, if he could; if 
not, then along the railroad, as it was the most important 
to him of the two. Here in America we generally called this 
first street Main street. "Early Civilization began on the 
shores of fertile rivers, where food was easily raised and 
transportation handy " Religion in the Making, p. 41, Smith. 



2(> Man — God's Masterpiece 

muning with her nearest female neighbors, lonely- 
like herself, and so started social life among these 
primitives, and woman has maintained her social 
leadership ever since. 

It was to her interest, lonely and defenseless as 
she was, to bring about a state of peace among her 
neighboring cave-men, and in this way she formed 
a lasting basis for the tribe which was to follow. 
" This instinct of fellowship is the most universal 
instinct of human nature, the source and means of 
all his culture and civilization." ^ The love of man- 
kind, which is now in its incipiency, precedes and 
leads up to the love of God. Love goes before re- 
ligion, for it is love that discovers to us the quali- 
ties of God, and we must experience love before we 
can love God and appreciate it in Him who is all 
love. " The study of the cause of things leads up 
to a discovery of the Maker — God; therefore, to the 
study of causation and the love of mankind must we 
go to understand God, and the study of both will 
unfold to us a love permeating everything and which 
we recognize as God." 

The man captured or wounded animals and 
brought them home, and the woman cared for them 
until finally, from this small beginning, grew flocks 
and herds. As game became scarcer, the man found 
it to his interest to take care of these animals, in 
order that they might increase and multiply and 

* Child and CMld Nature, p. 34, Buelow. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 27 

supply his wants, so in time he became the shep- 
herd. 

Having now property interests to protect * as 
w^ell as his life, he found it to his advantage to in- 
crease his community interests and to cease warring 
with his neighbor. So he not only expanded the 
number of his clan, which had hitherto been founded 
on blood relationship, but he took in others and 
formed a tribe and custom from now on became a 
law. Later on, they started friendly relations with 
other tribes and from this beginning grew the na- 
tion. Man at this time ruled over his family and 
passed upon them sentence of life and death. 
Women and slaves for a while formed the sole 
working class.f 

♦ Property rights had their origin in force, the primitive 
took what he wanted and held it by force until a stronger 
than he, desiring it, forcibly took possession. 

t Childhood of English Nation, Armitage, p. 34. 



CHAPTER II 

During this period man was gradually adopting 
a standard of morality and acquiring religious ideas, 
differing as his experiences differed with those of 
other men and tribes. " Man at no time has been 
able to hold views on any subject, except as related 
to human experience and except as conditioned by 
human culture," * and as his environments affected 
him, '' Religion is a human experience at once 
primary and universal " and f is found in some 
form among all people. 

Prof. William G. Sumner of Yale who has de- 
voted most of his life to the study says : " Re- 
ligion and philosophy are created by custom and 
usage and are not, as is popularly believed, the 
source and regulation of conduct." He says there 
is no such thing as God given and unchanging mor- 
ality. He claims it is not modesty that makes men 
and women wear clothes, but the basis of the custom 
is vanity. Morality first appears among primitives 
when any custom is so far established that it de- 
mands observance. In its early stages it is fre- 

♦ Religion in the Making, p. 60, Smith. 
t Religion in the Making, p. 58. 

28 



Man — God's Masterpiece 29 

quently so identified with religion that the two are 
often one.* 

Morality is right conduct toward our fellow-man, 
and therefore is largely a question of environment. 
Stealing a horse in the East is larceny only, but in 
the olden days out West, when the loss of a horse 
meant so much, it was a crime punishable by death. 
Again it would be an offense to steal a man's clothes 
in the tropics but a crime to steal them in the Arctic 
Zone. 

Prince Kropotkin,t says : " The social instinct 
innate in man as well as in the sociable animals, is 
the origin of all ethical conceptions and all the 
subsequent ethical development.'' 

Harold Bolce,t a most effective writer, spent two 
or three years in investigating what the professors 
are teaching in our colleges from Maine to Cali- 
fornia. He even matriculated in some of them. He 
says that Professor Earp of Syracuse University (a 
church college) holds that our standards of right 
and wrong are the product of experience; other pro- 
fessors are teaching the same; claiming that our 
conceptions of what we should do are not sent to 
us from Heaven but are the development of the 
centuries. The same authority § quotes Professor 

* Comparative Religion, p. 198, Carpenter, 
t Nineteenth Century Magazine, March, 1915. 
t Cosmopolitan Magazine, May, 1909. 
§ Cosmopolitan, August, 1909. 



30 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Giddings of Columbia as saying that ethics is a 
product of evolution, which is the law of all develop- 
ment. '' Culture and morals are the results of edu- 
cation." * 

Whether a thing is right or wrong depends upon 
its user. Kipling says : *'The crimes of Clapham 
are chaste in Martaban.'' What constitutes a sin 
differs with our varying evolutions, and virtue has 
no fundamental law. The cave-man was proud and 
received praise when he killed a man and brought 
his body home for food, whereas now, when the 
necessity has passed, such an act becomes anti-social 
and we call it murder and cannibalism. To-day the 
murderer would know he was doing wrong, but the 
degree of wrong-doing should be measured entirely 
by the extent of his evolution. Some have pro- 
gressed so slowly as to be yet on the animal plane in 
many respects, but their environments and necessi- 
ties are such that they should be regarded with pity, 
and, while put at once under restraint, their treat- 
ment should be of a reformatory, not a punitory na- 
ture. The man on the higher plane is not qualified 
to judge the one on a lower, he cannot understand 
the motives from which he acted and his weaknesses ; 
therefore, he is not really tried by a jury of his peers 
when such a body passes upon his case. 

* Child and Child Nature, p. 56, Buelow. It was Froebel 
who discovered the law of the unity of all development. 
Ibid, p. 87. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 3 1 

Right and wrong are varying terms and we too 
often make the mistake of judging from a wrong 
standpoint. Thus pain by itself is considered an 
evil, whereas if we stopped to realize its position in 
the divine economy as a character builder, we would 
often view it differently. Sin formerly was con- 
sidered as against the eternal law but we now know 
that it is a compliance with the law, the law govern- 
ing friction, is a condition simply needing readjust- 
ment. 

There is a secret longing in every soul for right- 
eousness, the voice of the God within, the God of 
which he is a part. Also, there is a secret longing 
for a life hereafter (and this belief is perhaps more 
universal than even that in the existence of a God), 
a desire to finish the work for which this life is all 
too short, and again it is the voice of the God within. 
On these two longings of the soul all religions are 
founded.* The intuitional enters deeply into all 
religious feelings and perceptions. Over the graves 
of his ancestors he often built rude structures for 
the spirit of the departed to dwell in. From this 
idea originated our modern church, and Westmin- 
ster Abbey with burials inside is the best example 
of it 

Religion being the personal relationship between 
God and man, it was natural for the latter to want 

♦"Man is incurably religious." Sabatier. 



32 Man — God's Masterpiece 

to define it.* Back of it are the yearnings of the 
human soul for a better expression of itself, for 
a fulfilment and understanding of its ideals of which 
its conception of God is the highest type. Man is 
the sum total of all conditions by which he is evolved 
and these he must necessarily reflect back in his re- 
ligious views, for religion, like morals, is the result 
of evolution. " It is in vain for religions to believe 
themselves immutable, they have all of them been 
borne forward by the movement of universal evolu- 
tion.'' t 

Religion makes the world intelligible, it provides 
the only working hypothesis and so becomes indis- 
pensable to his daily life, growing as man grows 
and changing as he develops, or it becomes a 
dead religion. At first he has the ideas of a 
semi-beast, an ideal founded on his fears, his pas- 
sions and his loves, but these become more and more 
spiritual as he advances. At this period he has little 
or no idea of his oneness with other men, their rights 
and wrongs at which stage his sense of justice be- 
gins. Like the beast, the first germ of religion is an 
intense fear of the elements and an appeal for pro- 
tection from some higher power. " In the mystery 
of the world man has always found the beginning 
of religion, for religion interprets the mystic.'' J 

♦The essence of religion is spiritual harmony with God. 
tThe Non-Religion of the Future, p. 19, Guyau. 
% Everyman's Religion, p. 3, Hodges. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 33 

According to Max Mueller, it can all be traced back 
to a single conception, that namely of the Infinite. 
When his five senses fail him, there comes in a per- 
ception of the Infinite. 

Every man has within him a sense of relation- 
ship to a divine being and a divine purpose.* Man 
has always believed in a hereafter, has always had 
a religious belief, and, from the earliest time we 
find him burying with his dead, things that may 
be of use to the deceased in his future life.f Man 
in his earlier stages saw he was dependent on na- 
ture, and as soon as he recognized this, in his 
weakness it was natural for him to worship her, 
and finally his longing for a closer fellowship made 
him humanize her in the forms of gods. He 
was alive so he endowed all nature with life. 
'^ The earliest religions were systematized and organ- 
ized superstitions.'' " Out of the mire of supersti- 
tious magic the lily of ethical religion has 
bloomed/' % ^' Man dates his origin as far back as 
the mire and slime of prehistoric times, but back of 
it all and the cause of all these changes was the un- 
seen spirit, that emanation of a living god, which 
vitalized the clay and made it a thing of life and 
beauty." 

The religious interpretation of no two men can be 

* Power of Ideals in American History, p. 119, Adams, 
t Fundamental Facts of Religion, p. 33, Hodges. 
t Getting Together, p. 16, J. M. Whiton. 



34 Man — God's Masterpiece 

alike, for each has a different identity and experi- 
ence. Also, each age with its added experience must 
differ from the other and keep on differing as they 
advance. Man in his primitive state, the uneducated 
man of the middle ages, and the educated man of 
to-day, must each reason and interpret v^hat he cog- 
nizes through his senses from a different standpoint, 
and therefore our interpretation of religion is con- 
stantly changing. So '' every great historical re- 
ligion passes thru numerous phases, as it is brought 
into contact with different cultures, and evokes vari- 
ous forms of speculative thought and inward ex- 
perience." "^ 

That religion is a growth may be proven by the 
fact that primitive man was unable to entertain any 
but the simplest forms of religion, owing to his 
feeble intellect, and these became more complex as 
his brain power increased. It was an unfolding of 
thought by thought thru the centuries. If so, 
why should the process cease now in an age when we 
are advancing so rapidly in all other lines ? f 

Man can only interpret nature in terms of his own 
experience, so his religion is ever a personal one. 
No two can possibly worship the same God, or hold 
exactly the same standards, for we are each the re- 
sult of different experiences. Henry Wood, an ex- 
cellent writer, says, '' Religion is less of a ritual 

♦Comparative Religion, p. 14, Carpenter, 
t Religion in the Making, p. 93, Smith. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 35 

profession or accepted creed and more of an unfold- 
ment, a normal human development." It is this 
that makes the work of the missionary so hard and 
unsatisfactory. The religion he offers is not a part 
of the would-be convert's life. It is therefore un- 
satisfactory, even though he may be overpersuaded 
by the earnestness and personality of his teacher and 
so thinks he believes. Left to himself, with the pres- 
sure removed, he will in time return to his old belief 
or modify the new one so that it becomes very dif- 
ferent from what the missionary taught him. He is 
like the little child whose only conception of God was 
his grandad. 

This religious unfoldment is the chief occupation 
of the human race, for the divine comes from a 
higher ideal, seeking expression and begetting dis- 
content with existing conditions, as a necessary step 
to its attainment. This dissatisfaction with things 
as they are is part of the price paid for progression. 
Later on when they became more intellectual, every 
civilized race has introduced sacred writings, 
founded more or less on miraculous happenings * as 
an authority for their moral and religious teachings, 
and hence these books not being the foundation of 
religion, but an outgrowth, have not the vital im- 
portance we have been led to suppose they had. 

All true ethical systems must come thru knowl- 

♦ Each claiming it was the true and only revelation and 
tliat all others were the works of the devil. 



36 Man — God's Masterpiece 

edge, not belief. Hence, no one religion can have a 
monopoly of the truth. The similarity of the funda- 
mental ideas of all great religious teachings points 
probably to a common source from which they all 
drew ; but the fact that these great men, more or less 
divinely inspired, accepted or taught them ; the length 
of time they have existed, together with the count- 
less millions that have believed, is itself a strong 
argument in favor of their being more or less in- 
spired.* 

Our belief in a God naturally arises from the con- 
viction common to us all that some power caused us 
to be, as it is evident that we and our fathers did not 

* Three hundred years ago Edward Herbert, an Oxford 
scholar, devoted himself to the study of comparative re- 
ligion and examined the recorded facts among the Greeks, 
Romans, Carthaginians, Arabs, Phrygians, Persians and 
Assyrians. He found the following to be the bases of re- 
ligion in relation to the powers above man : — 

1. That there is one Supreme God. 

2. That he ought to be worshipped. 

3. That virtue and piety are the chief parts of divine 
worship. 

4. That divine goodness doth dispense rewards and pun- 
ishments both in this life and after it. Comparative Re- 
ligion, p. 31, Carpenter. Theologies may be numerous, but 
there can be only one religion. For all peoples worship 
their ideal, one supreme power, maker of all, who is a 
beneficient God, punishes evil and rewards virtue, here and 
in a life hereafter. The Vedie seers said: "Men call him 
Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agui. Sages name him variously, 
who is but one." On this common ground should we all 
meet and discard unnecessary creeds and dogmas. 



Man — God's Masterpiece yj 

create ourselves, that it must have been some source 
higher than us. Effect and cause is, as Kant main- 
tains, a primary intellectual principle. '' Man be- 
came aware of the existence of higher powers than 
his own, and according to his belief respecting the 
nature of the powers above him, so was his re- 
ligion.'' * 

The mind of primitive man, Sir John Lubbock 
says, lives in a perpetual come and go of pure 
feebleness, incapable like a little child, of fixing 
itself upon anything.! And it was not until later 
when he became more intelligent and could con- 
ceive of a spirit or god outside of the tree which 
he formerly worshipped that he became supersti- 
tious, for it took a certain amount of thought to 
conceive the superstitious idea. Later on he became 
permeated with it, and even to-day in some coun- 
tries, so surcharged is the atmosphere with spirits, 
that the Arab, when he throws a stone, breathes a 
prayer that he may not hit one. 

Everything to his mind that occurred was a 
miracle (the word was so convenient, it saved him 
from any dreaded intellectual effort) and he was 
constantly being surprised, so limited was his in- 
telligence. '* Fear of evil and belief that it can 

* Christian Theism, pp. 217, 218. 

t The child and the savage are alike attracted by bright, 
gaudy and glittering things, also by action, as a mode of 
expression of thought, hence song and dance attract both. 



38 Man — God's Masterpiece 

be cured by divine intervention, was the origin 
of prayer." * The thunder, the lightning, the 
earthquake, and the hurricane spreading their de- 
vastations, and other great manifestations of na- 
ture, in man's early stages, impressed him as the 
doings of angry gods, having a distant abode in 
the clouds above,t the idea of distance by its 
very vastness enhancing his powers. It also stirred 
his imagination and his fears, and solitude filled 
his mind with superstitious awe.t The invisible 
bred fear in them and their selfishness distrust. 
Savages, Sir John Lubbock says, always regard 
spirits as evil. Living on this plane the concep- 
tion of good spirits were much less clearly de- 
fined because harder to conceive of than bad ones, 
who naturally also must greatly predominate in 
numbers; they must develop considerably before 
they could to any extent attribute good qualities 
even to their deities, being so deficient of these 
qualities themselves. Burton states that when he 
talked to the eastern negroes about God, they 
eagerly inquired as to his whereabouts, so that they 
might kill him for the trouble he had caused them. 

♦Non-Religion of the Future, p. 90. 

t Plagues, sickness, and misfortunes were often sent by 
him or evil disposed spirits, so they thought. It was the 
easiest solution of the problem they could arrive at. 

t Buckle's History of Civilization in England, Vol. 1, pp. 
88-90. Also Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 29, Keary. 



CHAPTER III 

Primitive man worshipped what he feared most, 
with just enough intelHgence to reaHze his weakness 
as against those powers of nature. At first he wor- 
shipped the objects themselves. His entire thought 
was centered in the actual,* for his mind is incapa- 
ble of conceiving of them as symbols, as he does 
later on, when he acquires more intelligence. Ob- 
jects exciting fear or displeasure are first selected, 
for your savage is ruled by his passions and emo- 
tions. 

It was natural for the primitive, where forces 
had no manifest unity, were apparently not re- 
lated, or even appeared to him as opposites (to be 
even warring with each other at times), to supply 
a different god, as the moving power of each. It 
needed centuries of advancement and thinking be- 
fore he could connect them, to reason out that often 
what seemed opposing forces in nature were not so, 
and to realize that there was only one creative power 
for all,t nor did it require much imagination in the 

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, pp. 24, 26, 35, Keary. 
t Religion in the Making, p. 61, Smith. 

39 



40 Man — God's Masterpiece 

primitive to conceive of these gods as conflicting 
and warring against each other, as when water 
quenched fire, etc. 

Each God with him represented some phase of 
Hfe as war, peace, agriculture, etc. Nor can he, 
at this stage, conceive of any moral relations. 
Herbert Spencer says moral laws are subsequent 
to the beginning of worship. The idea of one 
abstract god, separate from phenomena, was to 
come later. The next stage was nature worship, 
where he did not confine his attention to certain 
specified objects only, as for instance the cave or 
tree he sought shelter in at night. The branches of 
this tree later on, as he grew more intelligent, he 
tore down and made a rude shelter of, etc. In many 
cases, early man looked upon the tree as his parent 
and thought he returned to it at death. Hence, 
Dante pictured the leafless tree in hell, peopled with 
the souls of suicides."^ 

Man as an ape had lived in the branches of the 
tree, as primitive he had lived under it, and sought 
its branches for safety at night. As a tribe he had 
foregathered under it. No wonder, therefore, that 
many natives claimed descent from it.f 

He worshipped all surrounding objects, that es- 
pecially attracted his attention. The third was the 
anthropomorphic or ethical stage, when he gave to 
his gods human qualities. It was at this stage that 

♦ Outlines of Primitive Belief, pp. 66, 67, Keary. 
t Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 63, Keary. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 41 

morality was introduced.* It was undoubtedly 
from dreams, t sleep, delirium, fainting fits, som- 
nambulism, etc., that he received his first impres- 
sions of a soul, separate from the body, and of a 
spiritual world. t Also he was surrounded by mani- 
festations of power, in the winds, the flowing 
streams, the storm, etc., and even within himself he 
felt it, and it was natural for him to attribute this 
to some unknown powers or spirits. ** The absorp- 
tion of the respective worship of a number of dei- 
ties, into the worship of one deity, has been an inci- 
dental consequence of the progress of science." 
Every nation believes in the influence of the spirit- 
ual over the physical world. The Scriptures, the 
Vedas, Buddha, Brahma, the Scandinavian Eddas, 
the American Indian with his great spirit, the Obi 
among the Africans, the mythology of the Greeks 
and Romans, all proclaim it and tell of a life here- 
after where rewards and punishments are meted 
out. 

The progress was from a certain low form of 
fetichism, where the object itself only was wor- 

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 53, Keary. 

t Which were as real to him as they are to the three 
year old child, who earnestly relates to you as facts what 
happened to him in slumberland. 

t Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 35, Draper ; Non- 
Religion of the Future, pp. 82-84, Guyau. It is barely pos- 
sible that in some few cases our dreams may be a recal- 
ling of past experiences in some previous incarnation. 



42 Man — God's Masterpiece 

shipped,* to polytheism, to monotheism. f Redoubt- 
able power was at first the main attribute of God, 
later knowledge, intelligence and still later morality, 
were also ascribed to their gods, as the primitive 
progressed. '' Religion was at first a physical ex- 
planation of events.'' ^' It was an imaginary ex- 
tension of human society. Beneficent or malificent 
beings at first visible and tangible, then progressively 
invisible and separate from the objects they in- 
habited." '' With children and primitives to con- 
ceive is to believe." % A man's ideas of God is 
merely himself magnified, a little better than himself. 
He himself is the highest form of being he is con- 
scious of, therefore, arguing from the known to the 
unknown, he draws the comparison of God with him- 
self. His friends and enemies were his gods, and 
if he offers to him human sacrifice, it is because he 
likes to see the blood of his enemies and he natur- 
ally therefore thinks his god does also. His idea of 
the devil Hkewise was himself at his worst. But 
the devil passes away as his conception of God en- 
larges. § 

* Attempts to encompass the death of an enemy by mak- 
ing an image of him and ill-treating this image were com- 
mon in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Arabia, Africa, 
India, among the North American Indians and even in 
Scotland, etc. Comparative Religion, p. 76, Carpenter. 

t Non-Religion of the Future, p. 11, Guyau. 

JIbid, pp. 111-113. 

§ Advanced Course Yogi, Philosophy. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 43 

Experiencing the cruel penalties exacted, it was 
natural for man, out of his great fear and ignor- 
ance, to conceive of God as an all-powerful aveng- 
ing master (at this period he needed a master) 
with the powers of the air and the waters ever ready- 
to enforce his will at man's expense. He naturally 
gave to his god his own savage and demoniac char- 
acteristics, for all ideas of God, even of the most 
advanced amongst us, are but mere projections of 
ourselves, and therefore we being imperfect never 
realize or image the perfect God, though our con- 
ception of him will always be higher, as we ad- 
vance intellectually and become less combative. 

No religion keeps pace with the social and econo- 
mic advancement of the people; its teachers cling to 
bygone interpretations and precedent fearing a 
change, and this is natural to the other professions, as 
medicine and law, and therefore the most intelligent 
among them having advanced ideas, are never in 
complete accord with their teachers. We see God in 
the light of our intelligence and of our experience, 
and if that is limited, our appreciation of God is 
limited. The babe sees a tree, reaches out for it, rods 
away, he knows nothing about it, the savage knows 
more. The civilized man understands still more and 
the botanist most of all, but who so brash as to say he 
knows all the qualities and uses even of a tree. If 
not of a tree, how about our God " in whom all 
things move and live and have their being." Out of 



44 Man — God's Masterpiece 

man's nature worship and as part of his religion, 
grew up his mythology, crude and immoral we re- 
gard it, but he did not so regard it, for it was taken 
direct from nature happenings. Thus in the Rig 
Vida, Agin, the God of Fire originated from the 
friction caused by rubbing two sticks together and 
they producing fire. But the fire destroyed the 
sticks so they say Agin devoured his parents, etc.* 

Primitive man ran to his God for protection as 
the dog runs between his master's legs but it sub- 
tracted from his independence, and rendered him 
more cowardly, less self-reliant. Herein science 
has rendered him great service, f 

The first book he ever had to consult was nature, 
and it has ever been the best and the foundation of 
all written bookso Sacrifice played an important part 
for a long time, representing as it did the surrender 
of one's personality to appease the anger of a higher 
power. That he should have created a God, with 
many of the attributes of a devil % and then wor- 
shipped him in fear and trembling was only natural. 
A devil, however, had to be created to represent the 
evil that existed and he was generally more active § 

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, pp. 66, 67, Keary. 

t New Religion of the Future, p. 99, Guyau. 

t Jehovah ever upheld slavery, polygamy, v^ars of ex- 
termination and cruelty. 

§ Or at least it so impressed them, as evil results inspired 
fear, which made a more powerful impression at the time 
than the good that came to them. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 45 

than the God of good and so more feared the de- 
structive force as against God, the creative. Man 
may also have been led to this decision, partly by 
the fact that his own acts were good or evil, rep- 
resenting in himself these two powers. He also 
needed a scapegoat, one whom he could blame for 
the results of his own stupidity and wickedness. In 
early plays the devil is made the scapegoat, and often 
whipped off the stage amidst derisive laughter. 

In earliest years, height carried with it an idea of 
elevation, of morality, and depth thoughts that were 
the reverse. So their Gods were consigned to the 
heavens and the devil to underneath the earth. In 
all devotional attitudes, the eyes ever look upward, 
and when accused of crime or misdemeanor, the 
eyes are downcast."^ The birds soaring over the trees 
and mountains were thought to hold communion 
with the gods, to be divinities themselves, for the 
gods dwelt alone, and, besides, their flight was an 
ever-ending source of wonder to the Primitive and 
the spirit of prophecy dwelt with them they thought. 
The Greeks gave to each of their gods a special bird, 
and in the bible itself God most frequently appears 
as a dove, even the cherubims are the same as the 
Assyrian and Phoenician griffin. The Holy Roman 
Empire is typified by the double eagle, representing 
the combination of material and spiritual power.f 

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 55, Keary. 

t Outlines of Primitive Belief, pp. 60, 61, Keary. 



46 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Later on a shadowy object called Fate, ofif spring 
of Destiny, was also called upon to bear the blame 
for a part of his misfortunes; any excuse to shift 
the burden on to some one else, so as not to convict 
himself of error or stupidity. As their religious 
ideas became more complex and their numbers more 
numerous the necessity of a mediator to interpret the 
will of the gods becomes felt, one who could save 
them from thinking — a most laborious process then, 
and even now for most people, and priests are intro- 
duced to do their spiritual thinking for them. For 
their minds are feeble and their time consumed in 
trying to exist against the contending forces of 
man and nature, and to placate or outwit the threat- 
ening influences.* The medicine man of the Indian, 
and the juggler of the African are illustrations of 
the early priesthood. 

At first the head of the family offered the sacri- 
fice, identifying the father and the priest, '' later 
when assembled as a tribe some important man 
assumed this function, as the chief, until it be- 
came sufficiently important to consume the en- 
tire time and attention of one man, when these 
functions were delegated to the priest, who was 
thereafter the sole arbiter and judge in all things 
spiritual,! and whose duty it was to propitiate their 

* Present Day Theology, Gladden, p. 24. 
t Religion in the Making, p. 102, Smith. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 47 

gods and likewise the gods of the enemy if they 
happened to be the most powerful. Appointed by 
man, later on he arrogated to himself an ordination 
by God, as did the kings with their claims of di- 
vine rights. 

At first, they had but little authority, but later on 
they came to be feared, as much as the gods whose 
will they were supposed to interpret. As love of 
power is a dominant motive with man, and espe- 
cially on this low plane, they were not backward in 
grasping any means to attain power and authority. 
They surrounded their gods with mystery, invented 
ceremonies, sacrifices and forms innumerable by 
which means the gods were removed beyond con- 
tact with the common people and their own office 
rendered more necessary. It was an intellectual 
process and one that occurred in all religions. In- 
cidentally, by keeping the people in profound ignor- 
ance, they secured them as willing dupes, and from 
age to age strengthened the power of theology and 
their importance as interpreters of the divine will. 
Often honest at heart but arguing that the end justi- 
fied the means, until finally puflfed up with pride and 
the insolence of office they resembled the chanticleer 
that stands on the woodpile and crows to the sun to 
arise. They finally became, as we shall see, exces- 
sively tyrannical ; " usurped political as well as 
spiritual dictatorship, and at times rested on the 
prostrate nation like a horrid vampire/' paralyzing 



48 Man — God's Masterpiece 

their strength and crushing every effort of advance- 
ment* 

Witness the case of Spain especially, of v^hose 
king it was said " and the poor king so frightened 
that he slept between two monks to keep the devil 
off." t 

" History teaches that when any religious move- 
ment has become sufficiently developed, its priestly 
hierachy, influenced partly by religious enthusiasm 
and largely through love of power, place, and wealth, 
have used all manner of agencies and influence to 
dominate the minds of men and permanently es- 
tablish their control over the people, ostensibly for 
religious purposes, but really for the permanence of 
their power/' J And that the church was no excep- 
tion to this may be partly shown by the fact that for 
centuries during the middle ages, nearly one-half of 
the property in Europe, real and personal, was 
owned or under the control of the religious and 
monastic orders, bishops and clergy of the Catholic 
Church. 

Trade relations played a most important part in 
developing moral and religious ideas, far greater 
than they have ever been given credit for. Credit 
was necessary if large operations were to be under- 
taken, and for a long time people were too ignorant 

* Buckle's Civilization in Europe. 

t Religion of Man and Ethics of Science, Tuttle. 

t Evolution of Religions, 237, Bierer. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 49 

and dishonest to be trusted, the time had not yet 
come. Gradually, they reaHzed the necessity of be- 
ing honest and sober especially if they desired credit 
(and this latter was necessary for extended business 
operations), and that it was advisable for many 
other reasons also. So self-interest again became 
a powerful factor in establishing a higher moral 
sense. For ages man's religion grew apace with his 
intellectual and spiritual development, but through it 
all ran the barbaric ideas that *' might made right '' 
and '' an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," 
for was it not by brute strength that he lived and 
conquered ? 

Finally, there appeared one born of a virgin * 
in a manger, who preached a strange doctrine, 
one of love and forbearance, telling not of the 
god of Abraham and of Isaac, the god of a tribe, 
but of a universal god of Love,t but he was in 
advance of his age. The times were warlike as 
became the people, so the church crucified him. The 
Jehovah was a god of infinite hate and cruelty who 
dealt out infinite punishment for finite sins. The 
idea of God " runs parallel with the social history 
of Israel; Jehovah is a family god, a clan god, a 

* As they later on claimed, Romulus and Remus likewise 
were said to be born of a virgin, and Minerva sprang from 
Jupiter's brain, etc. 

t " God hath made of one blood all nations of man for 
to dwell on the face of the earth." 



50 Man — God's Masterpiece 

tribal god, and a national god in rotation, as the 
social group changes and enlarges. He becomes at 
last the universal god in the religious climax of the 
Hebrew life. It (the Bible) began with an almost 
universal polytheism, in which it is well recognized 
that other peoples have their own gods, who con- 
fer benefits upon them as Jepthah in his controversy 
with the king of Ammon says : '' Wilt thou not pos- 
sess that which Chemosh, thy god, giveth thee to 
possess, so whomsoever Jehovah, our God, hath dis- 
possessed from before us, them will he possess." * 

The change from the Jehovah of the old scrip- 
tures, stern and forbidding, to the loving God of the 
New Testament showed a corresponding uplift 
among the peoples and under its influence and teach- 
ings they became finally a peace loving people. 
** Christ scandalized the strict religionists of his 
time by his disregard for things ecclesiastical. He 
found congenial followers not among the priests but 
among the lowly men of business. The orthodox 
clergymen instinctively hated him." f 

The old prophets were mystics and wrote in the 
imagery of allegory, and Christ, being of the East, 
often made use of this form of expression. He 
came as a Savior because he showed man the way, 
and when his followers wanted to worship him. he 

♦Judges, xi:24. Religion in the Making, p. 86. 
t Everyman's Religion, p. 127. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 51 

said : *' Call me not good, there is none good save 
God alone/' and again, '' I am the way." Also to 
Mary Magdalen he said, " Go to my Brethren and 
say unto them I ascend unto my Father and your 
Father and to my God and your God." * Mary 
says : '' Thy Father and I have sought thee sorrow- 
ing." The apostle Paul, author of thirteen out of 
twenty-eight books of the New Testament does not 
speak of the divine birth, neither does Christ. The 
Gospel of Mark, the eariiest gospel, and the foun- 
dation of Matthew and Luke does not speak of it. 

In Matthew and Luke, the only books that men- 
tion it, contradict each other and many good Chris- 
tian scholars admit they are late legendary addi- 
tions to those gospels, t That orthodox, old Scotch 
Presbyterian divine Dr. Mackintosh says : '' For 
my part I should not think of regarding an explicit 
belief in the virgin birth of our Lord as essential to 
Christian faith, otherwise Paul was no Christian." 
He could have disclosed more than he did ; alas ! that 
he could not, but, as he said '* The time has not yet 
come," but perhaps this century with its wonder 
working, may yet reveal it to us. 

As Adam represented the material man, so Christ 
represented the spiritual man.t He taught man his 

♦John, XX : 17. 

t Present Day Theology, p. 142, Gladden. 
t Paul said : '* The first man is of earth, earthy, the 
second man is the Lord from Heaven." 



$2 Man — God's Masterpiece 

oneness with the Creator and all created things, and 
to develop this god within, which is the life principle. 

In olden days a Persian farmer had for his yearly 
visitor a priest, who on each annual visit repeated 
to him tales of wonderful discoveries of diamond 
fields, always over the mountains and far away, 
until finally the farmer became so interested that he 
sold his farm, boarded his family with neighbors, 
and wandered off, eager to discover the hidden 
wealth. In the meantime, the priest again visited 
the farm, staying over night with the new tenant 
and noticed on a shelf some bright stones. " Where 
did you get these? '' he said, after examining them. 
'* On the banks of my stream,'' said the farmer. 
Later on the old owner returned footsore and weary, 
his money all expended, to find that his old farm 
had become the first of the famous mines of Gol- 
conda ; and so it has ever been with man. His God 
has ever been on the distant mountain top, in the 
clouds, always far off, whereas all the time he has 
been within us, patiently waiting for us to recognize 
him and ask for his assistance. 

Christ emphasized our existence as spirit and 
the necessity of living a spiritual life. He taught 
that Nature and Man are alike divine. '' I am 
in my Father and ye in me and I in you." In 
a selfish world he plead for sacrifice of self and 
recognition of the brotherhood of man. He over- 
came the world by calling the higher spiritual 



Man — God's Masterpiece 53 

forces into operation, even as he says we can.* 
His was pre-eminently the rehgion of love. Jesus, 
the body, was crucified, but Christ, the spirit, they 
could not touch, and his thoughts are guiding the 
universe to-day. They simply emphasized his teach- 
ings by crucifying the body, gave him the sympathy 
of the ages, and so defeated their purposes.f 

He became the connecting link between the divine 
love and man, and impressed on us the necessity of 
mutual love and service. $ He appeals to us more 
strongly even than God does, because he is part man 
and because of the elimination of that fear which 
attends the worship of God, whom the Old Testa- 
ment pictures as a god of vengeance, a stern task- 
master. It will take many years to eradicate this 
one-sided view of God (necessary then but not now) 
before we can know him as he is — a loving Father, 
ever solicitous for his children, one with whom we 
can enter into fellowship without fear (a longing 
we all have) and which the little child emphasized 

* " Of myself I can do nothing, the Father working 
within me, He doeth the work." 

t ** The Egyptians had their magi, the Greeks and Romans 
their oracles, the Hebrews their seers and prophets, and all 
great religions its inspired teachers; the Mormons their 
prophets, seer and revelator ; the Indians their medicine 
man; Spiritualists their medium; and the whole world, 
more or less, their witches." Evolution of Human Soul, p. 
45, Andersen. 

$ Practical Idealism, 286, Hyde. 



54 Man — God's Masterpiece 

when he asked " if God was ever a little boy." It 
must come, for '* perfect love casteth out fear." "^ 

As we come gradually to realize more and more 
fully our divine origin and the extent of the Godhead 
within us, and become more intellectual, our need 
for a man god as a means of communication and 
intercession, between God and ourselves, will grow 
less and less, for the Godhead within us will bring 
us in closer touch and understanding with God, the 
Father, our Father, who is all love and is every- 
where. 

The early Christians worshipped Christ as an 
inferior God, so Arius and others taught in the 
Fourth Century. In the Fifth Century the council 
of Chalcedin decided that *' the union in the person 
of Christ of two complete and distinct natures; one 
divine, and one human, each retaining after the 
union without confusion or change the same proper- 
ties which it possessed before'' a miracle this, conse- 
quently many turned to the worship of Mary, who 
was all human and whom they could understand.! 
But this was very distasteful to many of the wise 
Christians for it threw them back again into polythe- 
ism and they had been teaching monotheism for cen- 
turies past. Having realized in past ages the bad ef- 
fects of polytheism, in which all surrounding nations 
still believed, the idea of a triune God, a trinity, 

* Non-Religion of the Future, p. 197, Guyau. 
t Present Day Theology, pp. 128, 129, Gladden. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 55 

opened up a solution to these differing fractions — a 
compromise that was satisfactory to all. Besides it 
was one which many religions and philosophers had 
taught in the past.* The Clergy intended it as three 
distinctions in the divine nature; but like all great 
compromises in religion or politics, it sacrificed truth 
on the altar of expediency and in time will have to 
be repudiated. 

The Pentateuch says the old Mosaic customs of 
sacrifice, pologamy, slavery and divorces at will of 
husbands, etc., were ordained by God, but they 
were contrary to the teachings of Christ, and he 
especially repudiated polygamy and divorces at will 
of husbands, etc. The God of the Old Testament 
ordered the slaughter of the women and children of 
the Amaleketes, but Christ taught of a God of Love, 
a Father in Heaven. f 

Any one living in the time of Christ would have 
pronounced his life a failure. A despised Nazarene, 
who failed, according to their ideas, to accomplish 
material results, a dreamer whose dreams no one 
could and few wanted to understand. He was per- 
secuted and poor, of no social standing, and at the 
crucial moment deserted by his beloved disciples. 
For of the twelve, one doubted him, one denied 
him, one betrayed him, and at the vital moment all 
left him. At last to die in agony on the cross ! Who 

* Everyman's Religion, p. 105, Hodges. 
t Evolution of Religions, p. 34, Bierer. 



56 Man — God's Masterpiece 

at the time would have dreamed that his was the 
greatest life ever lived? So with our little lives, 
they are not barren of results, not even the worst 
of them. We too suffer, and may at times be said 
to be crucified; but through it all, let us remember 
that our life here is but a very trifling period out 
of our actual existence, and that what we fail to 
accomplish now will be taken up later on and carried 
to a glorious completion. 

No life can be a failure — a perfect God can make 
no failure, for he is good (the definition of God) 
and everything he creates is good, must be, is, if it is 
a part of Him, for the law is that like begets like. 
The lily grows out of the muck and the mire (from 
necessity comes all the great inventions and move- 
ments of the day) and what we heretofore consid- 
ered as ofTal, chemistry calls by-products, and from 
it secures useful results. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Bible consists of sixty-six books, not one 
book.* The Old Testament thirty-nine books, New 
Testament twenty-seven books. (The Apocrypha 
fourteen.) They were written many, many years 
after the occurrences, centuries sometimes, and 
mostly by unknown authors. The Old Testament 
was not collected until the end of the first Christian 
Century, and the New not until the end of the Fourth 
Century. During that time the manuscripts were 
scattered among various churches, most of them 
having one or more of them only f and many of 
them even then were considered doubtful and of lit- 
tle value, and undoubtedly often attributed to the 
wrong men. J 

* American Encyclopedia, Vol. 2. 

t Everyman's Religion, pp. 46-48. 

t No Bible manuscripts earlier than 1000 B. C. now exist. 
The Rev. Charles Briggs, probably the ablest Bible scholar 
and linguist of our day and many other profound biblical 
teachers, conclusively prove that the authorship of nearly 
all the books of the Old Testament and of several of the 
Gospels and some of the Epistles of the New, are either 
ananymous or pseudonymous, unknovm or fictitious. Evo- 
lution of Religion, p. 32, Bierer. Higher scholarly criti- 

57 



58 Man — God's Masterpiece 

At first many of them were not recognized, but 
later on sixty-six were chosen (evidently a com- 
promise that let many in) and called the Bible. 
Written during a period of nine hundred years in 
different countries and by different people. The first 
books were written five hundred or six hundred 
years before Christ. No divine authority was 
claimed for placing them in the Bible.'^ 

cism shows that the first books of the Bible, including 
Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Songs of Solomon, etc., 
were compilations from Ancient documents and not the 
work of their reputed authors. This also applies to other 
parts. Evolution of Religion, p. 119, Appendix. Rev. 
Charles Briggs in the Bible, the Church, and Reason, p. 555 
says : *' The primitive sources of biblical history are my- 
thologies, legends, poems, laws, and the use of the historical 
imagination" and so untrustworthy is the authorship of 
the biblical books that he says finally that he bases his 
belief " upon the witness of the Holy Spirit." See also the 
testimony of the great German Scholar, Dr. Julius Will- 
hausen, in his History of Israel. Paley said that " it is 
dangerous to make Christianity answerable for the circum- 
stantial accuracy of the Old Testament narratives." Bishop 
Marsh endorses the opinion of Michaelis that the Gospels of 
Luke and Mark are not inspired at all. Bishop Hampden 
says " that there is much false moral philosophy in the 
Bible." Dr. Williams says one might lawfully deny that 
Moses wrote the Pentateuch, Peter the Second Epistle of 
Peter and Daniel the Book of Daniel, etc. Free Thinking 
and Plain Speaking, p. 30, Stephens. F. D. Bradley, Presi- 
dent of the Federated Churches of Cleveland, calls the Old 
Testament a living library of Hebrew classics, and that it 
had no sympathy with the Christian Religion. 
♦ Evolution of the Human Soul, Andersen. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 59 

Many Christian sects refused to accept them * 
while the rejected ones are known as the apocrypha. 
How much were those inspired who made the 
choice no one knows, or what prejudices and wire- 
pulHng entered into that selection. It would be use- 
less to deny that the new teaching was more or less 
affected by the ideas of the great philosophers of 
those times and prior thereto. ** The doctrines of 
Plato and his latest interpreters continued to influ- 
ence the ablest thinkers among the followers of the 
Gospel, and the philosophy of the church during the 
middle ages, merely re-echoes the teachings of the 
Great Athenian philosophers." f '' The systems of 
morals propounded in the New Testament contained 
no maxim, which had not been previously enunci- 
ated, and that some of the most beautiful passages 
in the Apostolic writings are quotations from pagan 
authors is well known to every scholar.'' t 

For fifteen hundred years all scientific facts and 
discoveries were referred to the Bible for solution, 
and woe to the man whose discoveries or ideas con- 
flicted in the least w4th the priestly conception of 
Holy Writ. But notwithstanding the Inquisition 

♦ Boulanger's Life of Paul, Chap. 2, as to New Testament. 

t History of Philosophy, p. 185, Weber. 

t Lecky's Civilization in England, Vol. 1, p. 129, Maekay's 
Religious Development, Vol. 2, pp. 376-380. Mure's His- 
tory Greek Literature, Vol. 2, page 398. Childhood of 
English Nation, p. 26. 



6o Man — God's Masterpiece 

and the stake * a few (but very few) scientists 
continued to announce from time to time the truth 
of their discoveries. The Inquisition continued to 
exist until Napoleon abolished it; at one time so 
great was its power that all the people of the Nether- 
lands were condemned to suffer the torments of the 
rack — the horror of it — if the Spaniards had con- 
quered! During the ministry of Torquemanda one 
hundred and five thousand persons were punished, 
of whom eight thousand eight hundred were 
burned. t The first application of torture under the 
Inquisition was in 1481 and the last as late as 1813. 
*' It was a tribunal established by the Roman Catho- 
lic Church in the middle ages for the detection and 
punishment of heresy." J 

The spirit of the age gradually became more pro- 
gressive and finally that glorious day dawned, when, 
after centuries of abuse of it, the church lost its 
temporal power. 

Human interpretations of the Bible and of existing 

* Religious intolerance according to Lecky is the worst 
of all crimes and can only be extripated by education, 
not by morality, for the best of men, if zealous enough 
have been great persecutors as witness the Emperors Mar- 
cus Aurelius, Julian and others. 

t Prescott*s History of Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. 
1, p. 265 ; also Llorente Histoire de I'lnquisition for further 
horrors, and Milman's History of Latin Christianity, Vol. 1, 
p. 381. 

t Nelson's Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, p. 442. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 6i 

phenomena have changed with the civilization of 
each age, but looking back we can see that the doc- 
trine of love which Christ taught is gradually at- 
taining greater and greater ascendency. 

Until the latter part of the Sixteenth Century, 
there was no country in w^hich a man was not in 
great personal peril if he expressed open doubts 
respecting the belief of his contemporaries.* 

" To scepticism we owe that spirit of inquiry, 
which during the last two centuries, has gradually 
encroached on every possible subject; has reformed 
every department of practical and speculative knowl- 
edge, has weakened the authority of the privileged 
classes, and thus placed liberty on a surer founda- 
tion; has chastised the despotism of princes; has 
restrained the arrogance of the nobles; and has 
diminished the prejudices of the clergy.'' f Atheists 
and liberal thinkers, whom in past years our ances- 
tors cursed and crucified, men who revolted at the 
idea of a vengeful,! jealous God and of a devil who 
claimed nine souls out of ten, so impotent was the 
orthodox God, and who claimed that nothing was 

* Buckle on Civilization in England, Vol, 1, part 1, p. 242. 

flbid, 243. 

$.And of a heaven wliere sexless singers with harps in 
hand sing endless repetitions while charred bodies animated 
by an undying soul endured endless tortures in a hell be- 
low and suffering humanity on earth, were called upon to 
join in the praises of an all-just, all-merciful God who or* 
dained it so, because it pleased him. 



62 Man — God*s Masterpiece 

sacred but truth, we now realize were among our 
most useful citizens, arousing discussion that will 
end in our finding out the truth. 

All seekers after truth are religious men, for all 
truth is of God. " The way to gain admission into 
the portals of science is through the portal of 
doubt; " Socrates. They did not realize that belief 
is a function of intelligence; it is a recognition of 
certain facts and not a creation of the imagination 
and as his perception of these facts changes, his be- 
lief changes. '' Doubt is often faith in the mak- 
ing." * 

They paid, and we reap the results. Without 
them we could have no free speech, no religious or 
civic liberty, and no progress. But what we lost by 
the suppression for ages of those who would other- 
wise have contributed greatly to our advancement, 
no one can ever tell. Tom Paine said: '' If we want 
to know what God is, search the Scripture called 
Creation." '' The only idea man can affix to the 
name of God is that of a first cause, the cause of all 
things." t Our own age has seen great changes in 
religious viewpoints. Among the latest has been a 
successful attack against the reality of miracles in 
past ages,| and which the French Revolution effect-? 

*W. J. Darwin. 
t Age of Reason, p. 26. 

t Professor Hadley of Yale say^ : " The day for super* 
natural sanction Las passed." 



Man — God's Masterpiece 63 

ually put a stop to. For Christ ever preached that 
"' greater things than these shall ye do." * Harold 
Bolce, in the Cosmopolitan, July, 1909, says, '' The 
Professors in our colleges believe and teach that 
whatever Christ accomplished was performed in 
keeping with fixed spiritual laws, and that these laws 
may be invoked now no less effectively than they 
were then.'' 

The history of every early religion has been that 
when it passed from under the original control those 
who taught it thereafter lost more or less of its orig- 
inal spiritual conception and fervor. This must 
necessarily be, for it was a different personality 
preaching it. The mind that had conceived and un- 
derstood it was missing. t 

Being human, their own ideas and the effect of 
their environment entered into their interpretation. 
They were of the people and naturally partook of the 
opinion of the masses. '' The low^er orders of the 
priesthood and the monks were drawn from the 
peasant and the slavish classes, for the better classes 
despised them, because of the lives they lead and 
their low origin. It was for this reason that the 
legends of the saints were so deeply imbued with 

* " He that belie veth on me, the works that I do shall 
he do also, and greater works than these shall he do.'* 
John, Chap. 14 : 12. 

t Carlyle says : " Quackery and dupery do abound in re- 
ligions, above all in the oldest decaying religions." 



64 Man — God's Masterpiece 

the thoughts and beliefs of rustic life." * Their 
religious ideals would naturally not be of a high 
order. As a result, the spiritual ego was less empha- 
sized and the body and its desires became more 
prominent, the body ever having a way of quietly 
asserting itself. 

The tenets of the early Christian Church while 
under the guidance of the simple fisherman of Gali- 
lee, f were accepted and taught entirely from a 
spiritual standpoint. These men were not scholars 
and hence preached as Christ had taught them, but 
when they died a great change for the worse gradu- 
ally came over the church. 

In the Seventh Century % the Bishop of Rome, 
who had heretofore been only one bishop out of 
many in the Catholic Church, announced his suprem- 
acy over all other bishops under the title of Pope. 
This party claimed that St. Peter was the first Bishop 
of Rome, and that he held the key to the gates of 
Heaven, and that he and those who came after him 
as his successors held the control of the gates for- 
ever. This gave them an enormous and successful 

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 480, Keary. 

t Peter knew nothing of the doctrine of the atonement nor 
does the Alexandrian Theological School or Tertullian ap- 
pear to have been cognizant of it. Philo represents the 
story of the fall as symbolical, and Origin regarded it, the 
same way as Paul, as an allegory. Evolution of the Human 
Soul, p. 137, Andersen. 

tChndhood of English Nation, pp. 24-26. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 65 

leverage to work on. The worship of the Virgin and 
the Saints had been introduced on the theory that if 
the prayers of those on earth failed, the prayers of 
those in Heaven ought to be successful (and it was 
well to have friends there) rites and sacraments un- 
der the control of the priests then became magic 
spells which opened the door of Heaven. They also 
preached eternal warfare between the body and the 
soul * and chose themselves as arbiters of the con- 
test, — most important claims these and destined soon 
to be of immense service, power, and revenue to the 
Catholic Church. 

The Priest's endeavor ever has been to exer- 
cise jurisdiction over both body and soul and 
to make himself, and his teachings infallible. Thru 
the index he obtained control over their think- 
ing and literature. By the confessional over their 
conscience. Thru the Inquisition he enforced con- 
trol over their bodies and actions and by his masses, 
he extended it to their souls. He made himself nec- 
essary at baptism, and the marriage ceremony, and at 
death he was present to perform the burial service, 
and even after death he followed him into purga- 
tory, and masses in plenty were necessary if he were 
to be released from everlasting punishment, f He 

♦ Ibid, p. 27. 

tThis idea the Hebrews found it convenient to adopt 
from their heathen neighbors centuries after the latter 



66 Man — God's Masterpiece 

made himself indispensible and all-powerful and 
ruled with an iron hand, requiring abject obedience 
and gifts — ever gifts — to Mother Church. No won- 
der Rome dictated to the civilized world for cen- 
turies and with such power, no wonder she abused it. 

They syndicated all claims to heaven, and as a 
trust claimed entire control over this world and the 
entrance into the world to come. Constantine * had 
been converted by a so-called miracle, a sign in the 
heavens especially for his benefit. So the early 
fathers said, and they called him Great, Yet the 
jfacts are that after a life of atrocious crimes, in- 
cluding the murder of his wife and son (that same 
year) he had applied to the pagan priests for absolu- 
tion, which they had the manhood to refuse. They 
threatened him with the vengeance of the gods in- 
stead '' He divined the future which lay before 
Christianity and determined to enlist it in the service 
of his empire." f 

^^ Rome in its decadence after persecuting for cen- 
turies the followers of Christ espoused at last a 
mongrel and semi-pagan religion as the state wor- 
ship under the primacy of the bishop of Rome. 

had preached it but in the last fifty years they have had to 
cease preaching it as it did not harmonize with the idea of 
an infinitely merciful Father. 

* It was he who in 325 A. D., convened the Council of 
Nice to ascertain if Christ was God or man. 

t Encyclopedia Britannica, 



JMan — God's Masterpiece 67 

From these councils the dogma of orthodoxy, the 
departure of the Christian world from the faith 
of the Apostolic times and the admixture of pagan 
ceremonies and festivals in the worship of the 
church date their prevalence, if not their origin. In- 
terpolations and alterations into the text of the Scrip- 
tures were made to fit the new creed and the fanati- 
cism and bigotry of the age. The Apocryphal books 
of the Old Testament, universally previously rejected 
by the early churches, as merely human productions 
were during the Fifth and Sixth Centuries A. D., 
admitted by Rome into the sacred canon." * 

Smarting under his rejection by the pagans, he 
applied to the Christians for absolution and found 
them much more inclined to overlook his faults. 
They promised all he asked if he would but ac- 
cept the faith, and so this scoundrel became their 
leader and from that time on began the perse- 
cution against free thought, f The Christian 
Church now entered into a co-partnership with 
the temporal powers, for the suppression of the 
truth and the oppression of the masses for cen- 
turies to come. J In vain, says Renan, to search 
the Roman laws before his time for enactments 

♦ Evolution of Religions, p. 46, Bierer. 

t Reli^on of Man, etc., p. 30, by Tuttle. 

t How active they were may be shown by the fact that 
in the Fourth Century alone, a million witches, mostly 
women, were burnt alive. 



68 Man — God's Masterpiece 

against abstract doctrines, he brought persecution 
and the sword. " Then came the carnival of the- 
ology, the night of ignorance rapidly gathered over 
the world. The philosophers, sages, poets, orators, 
statesmen, perished and none arose to take their 
places," * for the word had passed through the 
Christian world that learning was to be shunned, to 
be abhorred as a thing accursed, (for it raised 
doubts). 

Hate, pride and hypocrisy were consecrated in 
the name and cause of religion; loving God, you 
must follow up his enemies and exterminate them. 
Implicit faith in priestly teachings (and the aver- 
age priest then so woefully ignorant) alone must 
be accepted.f In 538 A. D., a decree of Justin- 
ian made the Pope the head of the church, the 
corrector of heretics over whom he was given 
power of life and death. It gave him the tem- 
poral power which the church abused so greatly 
for centuries thereafter. 

'' The early Christians stigmatized learning as 
profane and so identified was ancient literature with 
the old form of worship that it was held in ab- 
horrence by the fanatical devotees of the Nazarene. 
In 398 A. D., the Council of Carthage forbade 
the Bible being read by bishops (then how could 
they teach it) and the ignorant masses were pre- 

♦ Religion of Man, etc., p. 30, by Tuttle. 
t Religion of man by Tuttle, pp. 30, 31. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 69 

vented from incurring the sin by inability." * In 
1229 A. D., the Council of Toulouse *' forbids the 
laity to have in their possession any copy of the 
books of the Old and New Testament, except the 
Psalter and such portions as are contained in the 
Breviary or Hours of the Virgin, and most strictly 
forbids these works in the vulgar tongue/' The 
Council of Torracone, 1242 A. D., ordered all 
vernacular versions to be brought to the Bishop 
to be burnt, and similar prohibitions from time to 
time for the next two centuries. It is one of the 
books mentioned in the Ten rules concerning pro- 
hibited books and approved by Pius IV and in force 
to-day. t 

"' The knowledge of the Pagan world was dis- 
carded and the dogmas of theology supplied their 
place." X They enforced implicit, unreasoning 
faith and ignorance on their followers, when they 
might have known that knowledge and intelligence 
were bound to win out in the end. Why should their 
interpretations bind us to-day, why? Julian says: 
'' The sum of all their wisdom was compressed in the 
single precept, believe," and hence there was no in- 
ducement, no encouragement for those who might 
otherwise have shone forth as great men of letters 
or science, but only danger instead. 

*The Religion of Man, p. 120, by Tuttle. 

t Biblical Ecclesiastical and Theological Encyclopedia. 

t Ibid, 121. 



70 Man — God's Masterpiece 

To show that the Christian fathers and repre- 
sentative Christians of those times occupied a very 
low moral plane, I quote as follows : * *^ I never 
yet said Ammianus Marcellinus found wild beasts 
so savagely hostile to me as most of the Christians 
are to one another." Under this reign in Cetea, 
305 A. D., at a synod of Bishops, one of their 
number, Pupurius, Bishop of Laurata, on being 
openly accused in convention of the murder of his 
nephews said : '' Yes, I did kill them, and I kill 
all who stand in my way," and to this confession of 
murder, by one of their members, no attention what- 
soever was paid by the assembled bishops, not a voice 
raised in protest.f Yet this Council and later ones 
passed upon articles of faith up to the year 381 A. D., 
when the Nicean Council at Constantinople ratified 
their acts and called it the Nicean Creed, " the 
profession of the Christian faith, common to the 
Catholic Church and to most of the Protestant de- 
nominations," J and which binds us to this day as a 
profession of faith, and, if we are to believe St. 
Athanasius " the word of the Lord pronounced by 
the eucumenical s3mod of Micaia stands forever." § 

The Barbarians who succeeded them were ignor- 
ant and superstitious, more so even than the lowest 

* Heroes of the Nations, Furth's Constantine, p. 345. 
t Heroes of the Nations, Constantine by Furth, pp. 161-163. 
$ Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 10, p. 49. 
§ Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, p. 796, 



Man — God's Masterpiece 71 

Romans, and saint worship and features appealing to 
their superstitions were introduced to a repulsive ex- 
tent. The Romish Church were not alone in attribut- 
ing happenings often to some supernatural cause. 
Every Church has done so and many teachers and 
philosophers and poets. It is " the great dogma of 
the universe." * It saves all worry and all laborious 
thinking and was such an acceptable explanation and 
w^oe to him who disturbed their theories by arguing 
from a scientific standpoint. Thus the original 
Church lost much of its spirituality and assumed 
forms and ceremonies and complex interpretations 
that were foreign to its old sweet simplicity. 

* History of the Supernatural, pp. 21, 22, Howett. 



CHAPTER V 

" The Reformation, while doing away with some 
of the worst mummeries, left many undesirable fea- 
tures and interpretations, which abide with us to the 
present day." * Rev. I. E. Roberts of Kansas City 
says, '' During the first one hundred years of the 
ministry of Christ no writer — Pagan, Jew or Chris- 
tian — is known to have set forth the doctrines of 
the Immaculate Conception, the material resurrec- 
tion or the miracles of Jesus. The doctrine of the 
Divinity of Christ and of the Trinity were not 
formulated 'til the beginning of the Fourth Century, 
the doctrine of original sin not until the Fifth Cen- 
tury, and that of atonement still later. So Jesus 
never formulated one of them, nor did His apos- 
tles/' t 

Christ's doctrines were far too spiritual, they 
could not comprehend them, were therefore use- 
less to them and they had to change them, so they 
could understand, and it were better to do so than 
to cast them aside, for those who came later would 
derive benefit from these lofty ideals. 

* Civilization in England, Buckle, Vol. 1, part 1, page 188. 
t Priestley's History of the corruptness of Christi- 
anity. 

72 



Man — God's Masterpiece 73 

But the experience of Europe teaches us that 
when the superior religion is fixed among an in- 
ferior people, its superiority is no longer seen.* 

To the strictly orthodox who might take exception 
to some of the statements in this book, I would say 
that as man outgrows the clothes of childhood so 
does he outgrow the religion of an early stage. 
Orthodoxy represents the fixed, the unchangeable, 
the immovable, but everything in nature progresses, 
is in constant motion down to the smallest elec- 
tron, hence orthodoxy is in conflict with the known 
laws of nature and must pass away like all error. 
Orthodoxy means right relation to a creed, and 
creed defines the relation of the soul of man to 
his God. Therefore, is of man's construction, 
his interpretation only, is not divine, and like all 
man's works subject to change. And were it not 
so, Harnack could not have filled seven octavo 
volumes with the phases of theological development 
and change. 

What is best suited to us to-day, as selfishness 
was in our very early stages, becomes the great 
stumbling-block, under a more advanced stage, to 
our spiritual betterment, and must be eliminated 
and therefore as we advance our morals and re- 
ligious ideas must change more or less just as we 
change our laws according to the changing condi- 

* Buckle on Civilization in England, Vol. 1, part 1, page 
192. 



74 Man — God's Masterpiece 

tions of our evolution. Our laws are on a rather 
lower plane than the average conscience, and which 
finds expression as public opinion. It takes some 
time to crystalize our ideals into law and overcome 
the opposition and ignorance of those who oppose 
all change or who do not understand. 

Would you have us believe that articles of faith 
constructed centuries ago by uninspired men, our 
mental and moral inferiors, are final expressions of 
truth? The Churches can never be filled until the 
preacher from his pulpit can preach a pure, true re- 
ligion in all its simplicity and without the great mass 
of error that has crept into it in ages past. What you 
want should be the absolute truth, for that is all that 
can survive and fill your Churches. You believe in 
religion as taught by Christ. If the pulpits have 
not been preaching this, you above all others should 
seek out the truth and have it proclaimed from the 
housetops, and the best proof that they have not is 
the fact that out of a population of one hundred 
millions in the United States and Alaska only 
twenty millions is the average attendance (and the 
major part women), showing it does not satisfy, 
whereas truth always does. 

The Rev. Mr. Russell, head of the International 
Bible Students' Association, in the Telegram, No- 
vember 17, 19 14, openly advertises the fact that 
'' of the two hundred thousand professed ministers 
of Christ, probably one hundred eighty thousand 



Man — God's Masterpiece 75 

declare privately if not publicly that they have no 
faith in the Bible as God's inspired message to his 
people. The other tv^enty thousand are sadly con- 
fused while still clinging to the Bible as the Divine 
Word/' The truth with all these ministers is that 
they have been giving heed to the creeds and tradi- 
tions of men formulated in the Dark Ages, and have 
been neglecting their study of the Bible.* 

We accept as Gospel truth the testimony of such 
as St. Augustine, who states that he had found 
by personal experience that the flesh of the pea- 
cock never decayed.f Origin, Tertullian, and 
Clement of Rome are also great authorities often 
quoted. Yet the former thought the sun, moon, 
and stars were living and capable of seeing. Ter- 
tullian believed the hyena changed its sex every 
year, and Clement said the phoenix lived five hun- 
dred years, died and became a worm, which took up 
its parent's bones and flew away to HeliopoHs and 
laid them there on the altar of the sun.| 

Do you believe that death and sin and noxious 
weeds were brought about by Adam's sin; that his 
sinning cancelled all obligations on the part of God, 
the Father, to the countless generations that were 
to follow as well as those then existing who never 
even heard of him, all innocent of his sinning? 

* A severe arraignment this, coming from a minister, 
t Light of Day, p. 47, Burroughs, 
t Idem, p. 58. 



76 Man — God's Masterpiece 

What a commentary also on God that his mightiest 
efforts should beget so many failures ! * That little 
infants will be damned (if unbaptized) at death, 
etc. ? All these your fathers believed in, yet if your 
'fathers and their fathers were wrong for ages past, 
why are you, a father too, infallible? 

Has erroneous understanding existed up to your 
time, and have you the infinite wisdom to give us the 
only correct and lasting version? Your fathers 
claimed it and were wrong; do you? There were 
more churches to the population in the middle ages 
than there are to-day. The proselyting spirit was 
far greater and many more religious waiters. f Have 
you ever read the confession of Faith? If so, do 
you believe in it? Sec. 3, Westminster Confession 
of Faith, says: "By the Decree of God, for the 
manifestation of his glory, some men and angels 
are predestined into everlasting life, and others fore- 
ordained into everlasting death." Sec. 4. " These 
angels and men thus predestined and foreordained 
are particularly and unchangeably (however good 
or bad) designated and their number is so certain 
and definite that it cannot be either increased or 
diminished/' 

Realize it is human to err, and your priest or min- 
ister is no exception to the rule, especially if he 
happens to be a zealot. Every new generation has 

♦ Light of Day, p. 58. 

t Civilization in England, Vol. 1, p. 138, by Buckle. 



Man — God's Masterpiece "jj 

busied itself showing up the errors in religious be- 
lief of the previous age, and this age is no exception 
to the rule. Surely you do not hold to the religious 
interpretations of the Scriptures as expounded one 
hundred years ago, and, if not, what proof have you 
that your teachings of to-day are correct, when ex- 
perience tells you that they will be rejected by the 
next generation, that they are visibly changing 
even now. You do your best and so will they, but 
you must necessarily make your deductions from 
your past experience, of which your reading is a 
part, and the experiences of no two generations, or 
even of two individuals can ever be alike. There- 
fore, you will necessarily differ, and ever continue 
to, to a certain extent, for a good 'man will naturally 
conceive of a higher better God than an evil man 
can do, and as he grows better, the higher will be his 
ideal, and it will take all eternity for us to recognize 
the beauty and grandeur of the Godhead. 

If religion, like morality, is a growth (ever grow- 
ing purer and grander) why should it not continue to 
change for the better as w^e grow more intellectual, 
and if so, why not have an up-to-date interpretation? 
I quote from the Chicago Evening Post, July nth, 
19 14, *' Throughout the world it is a critical time for 
faith and where ecclesiasticism is strongest, there 
revolt seems also to rage most fiercely against its 
edicts and restraints. We do not fear that religion 
will perish, but it must have freedom, and it must 



78 Man — God's Masterpiece 

meet the test of science in the pressing human prob- 
lems of our times. Men are putting the emphasis 
on the pragmatic rather than the dogmatic, and 
creeds that survive must work and not rule/' If 
old dogmas have to be attacked, remember that truth 
cannot be asserted without denouncing faslehood; 
that the old building must be torn down before the 
new can be erected. 

Later on as their temporal and spiritual power in- 
creased the priests as a body became proud, arro- 
gant and cruel, and those who were the most honest 
and zealous in their belief often became the most in- 
tolerant,* persecuting every one who differed with 
them, and love, the keystone of Christ's teachings, 
was cast aside and lost for centuries. 

To argue over the inconsistencies of their teach- 
ings became a sin, " creed ritual and allegiance to the 
church under them became superior to character." 
They supplied visions to confute facts and intro- 
duced the rack to stifle argument. For centuries 
freedom of thought even was a crime. ^' Truth for- 
ever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." 
The Fathers taught that belief without examination 
was necessary in the words of Celsus, '* neither giv- 
ing nor receiving any reason for their faith." They 

♦ It is an undoubted fact that an overwhelming number of 
religious persecutors have been men of the purest inten- 
tions, of the most admirable and unsullied morals. Civil- 
ization in England, Buckle, Vol. 1, part 1, page 132. 



Man — ^God's Masterpiece 79 

claimed that man was saved by grace alone, of which 
they were the sole dispensers. 

The priests of all nations ever confined their 
knowledge of their greatest philosophical teachings 
to a chosen few. Christ imparted to us some of this 
inner knowledge when he preached the unity of a 
spiritual God, whose temple is within each one of us 
and in whom we live as he lives in us — in spirit.* 
But even he could not always speak directly to the 
people of his inner thoughts for they could not have 
understood. Talking to his disciples he said : '' To 
you is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom 
of Heaven, but unto them that are without all these 
things are done in parables." f 

These abstruse truths undoubtedly came from 
Egypt and the far East. Ennemoser says : " That 
into Egypt (whose religion says Chanepollins was 
profoundly monotheistical) and the East went Her- 
oditus, Thales, Pharmenides, Empdocles, Orpheus, 
and Pythagoras to instruct themselves in natural 
philosophy and theology." Others also went, among 
whom it is supposed was Christ. 

Middletown, a church of England clergyman, 
years ago, in his Free Inquiry, Arnold also a great 
church authority ; Lecky and other ecclesiastical and 
lay writers since have shown or admitted that many 
of the early church fathers, some of whom had in 

♦ Evolution of the Human Soul, p. 131. 
t Matthew, XIII-II. 



So Man — God's Masterpiece 

their custody the books that were to make up the 
Bible, had " applauded falsehood, had practised 
wholesale forgeries and grossly falsified church his- 
tory and documents," and had exercised " pious 
frauds," to stimulate the devotion of the people.* 

Primitive man and man up to a comparatively 
short time ago was governed like the animal by his 
affections and emotions. Reason made no appeal to 
him at first, for his mind was too deficient to enter- 
tain it; the simplest thoughts required great effort 
on his part therefore were undesirable. So his early 
religion was entirely one that answered these condi- 
tions. To-day reason demands that it be sensible 
and reasonable, conformable to natural law and this 
change orthodoxy is fighting, f 

The faith that has made men whole has departed, 

* " If you once start on the basis of a lie the number will 
be innumerable, that you will have to tell thereafter to 
support it." 

t The Greek Testament comprises one hundred eighty- 
one thousand two hundred fifty-three words, yet such 
is the number of mistakes, perversions, forgeries, and in- 
terpolations in the existing manuscripts, that in compar- 
ing the documents together one hundred thirty thousand 
various readings are detected (most of them, however, im- 
material) showing that the manuscripts from which the 
New Testament is translated are not absolutely correct in 
one word out of six. For further on subject, see Monks, 
Popes and their Political Intrigues, p. 67, John Alberger. 
Tischendorf's New Testament, in its introduction says: 
"But the Greek Text of the Apostolic writings, since its 
origin in the First Century, has suffered many a mischance 
at the hands of those who have used and studied it." 



Man — God's Masterpiece 8i| 

the pure, simple life heretofore taught was gradually- 
lost sight of, and intellectual processes begat varying 
creeds, each at war with the other. Temporal ag- 
grandizement was eagerly sought after at any cost. 
Corruption, graft, licentiousness reigned supreme. 
The writer does not wish in the remarks that follow 
to denounce the Catholic Church of to-day which is 
doing a great work, their leaders simply represented 
the people of those times, who had still a very large 
amount of the savage in their makeup, and the 
Protestants when they attained power later, for the 
times were no better. Their environment must nec- 
essarily affect them, and they were of the people 
also. The quotations are confined to the best Catho- 
lic authorities so cannot be said to be partisan. 

It is necessary to show up the character and mental 
capacity of these early Christians (and remember our 
forefathers were probably among the number) and 
then ask ourselves the question if we should be bound 
by their interpretations as evidenced by the can- 
nons, bulls, etc., they issued or should we use our 
own judgment? What follows may be found in 
Monks, Popes and Their Political Intrigues, by John 
Alberger. 

In the life of Bishop Scipio de Ricci, written 
by an eminent Catholic, the practice of the church 
in allowing bishops and priests to keep concubines, 
while it forbids them to marry, is asserted and de- 
fended. The Council of Toledo passed a canon 



82 Man — God's Masterpiece 

forbidding priests to keep more than one concu- 
bine in public. Chamances, a great Catholic au- 
thority, says the adultery, obscenity and impiety 
of the priests are beyond description. Also he says 
to veil a woman in these convents is synonomous to 
prostituting her. St. Chrysostom thinks the num- 
ber of them (monks) that will be saved bears a very 
small proportion to those who will be damned. 
Pope Paul protected houses of ill- fame and acquired 
great riches by selling them licenses. The Council 
of Augsburg ordered that all suspected females 
should be driven by whips from the dwellings of 
the clergy. Pope John XXIII was deposed by the 
Council of Constance for having committed seventy 
different sorts of crimes, among the number of 
which was illicit commerce with three hundred 
nuns. 

The Trappists, a Monkish order of highway rob- 
bers, were constantly employed in abducting females, 
confining them in their monastery and perpetrating 
the most atrocious rapes. At the Council of Canter- 
bury, King Edgar declared that the houses of the 
clergy were nothing but brothels. Petrarch la- 
ments over the fact that the clergy at the papal 
court were shamefully licentious. Llorente, Chief 
Secretary of the Spanish Inquisition in 1789, states 
that the inquisitors having granted permission to de- 
nounce their guilty confessors, the number of priests 
denounced was so great that thirty secretaries were 



Man — God's Masterpiece 83 

employed for sixty days in taking depositions down, 
and it was so terrible that they suppressed it. 

John XII and Benedict XIV were elected by two 
prostitutes, Theodora and Marzia. Pope John XII 
was a drunkard and profligate blasphemer, murderer, 
and rapist. Pope Alexander VI seduced his own 
daughter. John XXII was a pirate in his youth, etc. 
Sixty-four of the popes died by violence, twenty-six 
were deposed, yet these men were chosen by the in- 
spiration of the Holy Ghost and were infallible. 
Their accredited titles established by bulls, can- 
nons, etc., are as follows: ''Our Most Holy 
Lord God," ''The Lamb of God," "More than 
God." A bull of Gregory VII says " that every 
Roman pontiflF when ordained becomes holy." 
Feraris in Papa, Art. 11, No. 10, says: "He is 
above angels." Durand says : " The pope can trans- 
substantiate sin into duty and duty into sin." Mos- 
covius says : " The bishop of Rome cannot even sin 
without being praised, etc." 

But the Catholic clergy were not the only sin- 
ners. The Independent United Free Church of 
Scotland broke away in the Seventeenth Century 
from the established church because of the low 
moral state of the clergy and their rotten political 
system. The people for centuries had looked to 
Mother Church for the carrying out of their ideals, 
to result in a betterment of their conditions, they 
hoped The temporal power really rested on this 



84 Man — God's Masterpiece 

foundation. But the church had bitterly disap- 
pointed them. They had therefore to look else- 
where and the church in consequence lost its po- 
litical power forever. 

In the meantime, religious warfares, as the natural 
result, were thereafter frequently waged, Beecher 
said the saddest and cruelest in all history,* all in 
the name of the peace loving Nazarene. Unfortu- 
nately, with the Reformation came a new authority. 
It was no longer the Pope but the word, and the 
Church's interpretation must still be accepted. Now 
the divine right of the Church has passed away^ with 
the divine right of Kings, and, like it, in oceans of 
blood and treasure. 

From the year 700 on for a thousand years, 
Church and State inflicted tortures indiscriminately 
throughout Europe. f " For a thousand years it 
sat on the prostrate form of a great civilization 
and attempted to guide the course of events.'' % 
'^ Although it may not be said that Christianity is 
responsible for the night of ignorance in which 
Europe wandered for over a thousand years, yet 
if not the sole cause, it was the chief and most ac- 

* Andrew D. White, ex-president of CorneU, said " that by 
its persecution of Roger Bacon the Church did more to 
harm Christianity and the world than had been done as a 
result of all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever 
lived." 

tThe Religion of Man, by Tuttle, p. 123. 

t Ibid, 119. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 85 

tive agent in the production of the awful catastro- 
phe/' For during this period it held mankind in 
implicit obedience.* '' The barbarians who followed 
wxre as plastic as children in the hands of the priests, 
and easily persuaded to substitute the Mother of 
God, and Christ for their peculiar deities/' f 

During the dark ages before the invention of 
printing the church was the source of most of the 
learning of the day. The Literature of Europe, 
shortly before the final dissolution of the Roman 
Empire, fell entirely into the hands of the clergy.$ 

The people being ignorant and besotted, and their 
time fully occupied in obtaining a bare living, the 
priests found it to their advantage to keep the 
masses in this condition. Poverty begets ignorance, 
ignorance credulity, and credulity encourages a blind 
submission to the church. § So ignorant were they 
in the Tenth Century that an entire army fled before 
an eclipse of the sun.|| 

They have ever bitterly opposed the spread of 
education, fearing a loss of power and revenue, and 
a questioning of their interpretations of the Scrip- 
tures if the people were allowed to read and reason 

* Ibid, 123. 

t Ibid, 122. 

t Buckle on Civiiization in England, Vol. 1, page 222, 
part 1. 

§ Buckle on Civilization in England, Vol. 2, part I, 
page 14. 

II Sprengel Hist, de la Medicine, Vol. 2, page 368. 



86 Man — God's Masterpiece 

for themselves. From the time the Christians as- 
sumed control to as late as the beginning of the 
Sixteenth Century, we find but very few great 
men, due in part to the fact that the church re- 
garded the study of God through his works as 
unorthodox, ungodly, and persecuted the scien- 
tists, who dared assert the world was round: that 
there were innumerable worlds besides ours and 
the like, even in Mexico, Peru, India, etc., the 
reign of the priest was one of terror in early days. 

" The triumph of Christianity meant retrogression 
to anatomy as it did to all the other sciences. 
The popes were resolved above all things to de- 
tain humanity in ignorance." ^ " Every serious at- 
tempt that was made before the beginning of the 
Nineteenth Century to solve the problems of the 
origin of species lost its way in the mythological 
labyrinth of the supernatural stories of creation.'' f 
We will not wonder so much at the length of time 
that the people submitted to the tyranny of the 
church when we realize that personal initiative and 
personal responsibility are modern ideas. 

The people had always consulted their priests and 
oracles, they were besotted and ignorant and were 
told that it was the Will of God. They fought and 
persecuted for two hundred years those who main- 
tained the truth of the Copernican System (as well 

♦Riddle of the Universe, Haeckel, p. 23. 
t Riddle of the Universe, Haeckel, p. 72. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 87 

Martin Luther denounced the theory of gravitation 
as taking away from the powers of God) and any 
opposition on their part was antagonism to God and 
hell fire was the reward of all who dare oppose him; 
the Anathema of Rome became the curse of the cen- 
turies. Revealed religion (their version) was the 
only source to draw from ; to go to nature for facts 
was a defiance of churchly authority; whereas sci- 
ence has since given us the grandest conception of 
God and his works, far beyond the theologians. 

The priest was equally ignorant and superstitious 
and even at a comparatively late date we find him 
cursing the winnowing machine because it was sac- 
rilegious thus to employ God's agent, the wind.* 
Science was against God, they said, and scientists 
were disturbing factors. Has not Theology always 
maintained that revealed religion was superior to 
reason, and that the material man with his profane 
sciences was at enmity with God ? f 

Then came the Reformation and the formation of 
a protesting party, the ending of Feudalism.! x\nd, 
thanks to the invention of printing a short time 
before, reading finally became general, the school- 

* Non-Religion of the Future, pp. 98, 99. 

t Light of Day, pp. 13, 14, Burrough's " That reason was 
a Rebel unto Faith," Sir Thomas Browne says : " Many 
things are true in divinity which are neither inducible by 
reason nor conformible by sense." Burrough calls Theology 
(orthodoxy) "the daughter of mythology." 

t History of English Literature, p. 20, Spaulding. 



88 Man — God's Masterpiece 

master was abroad to help free the slave from 
priestly bondage and then to educate him, and so we 
gradually emerged from the gloom of the Dark 
Ages.* Haeckel says : '' The spiritual tyranny of 
the papacy was broken in the Sixteenth Century by 
the Reformation." 

Responsibility to one's conscience (in religion) 
was Luther's fundamental idea, the substitution of 
individual initiative for objective authority. At the 
latter part of his life he became so discouraged at 
the ignorance of the people that he said: " If I 
could reconcile it with my conscience, I would labor 
that the Pope with all his abominations might once 
more become our master. It is by severe laws and 
superstition that the world desires to be guided." f 

The day for a religious faith founded on texts 
and symbols, since the Reformation is being quietly 
superseded by a moral faith founded upon the right 
of private judgment. J 

R. MacDonald in Mind, Health and Religion, 
says : '' The dark ages came near crushing out the 
Church. The corruption of the age came in, the 
Church's ideals fell. Her priesthood became licen- 
tious. A righteous remnant came out and founded 
monastic orders. The monastry (which later be- 
came demoralized) saved the Church from disso- 

* Riddle of the Universe, p. 23. 

t Non-Religion of the Future, p. 193, Guyau. 

$ Non-Religion of the Future, p. 194. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 89 

lution, and kept religion from worldly and sensuous 
taint. Asceticism ruled. Their concern was to save 
the soul, the body is the great curse, in it all evil 
dwells. It possesses no good, therefore crucify it, 
starve out its strength.* Fast and pray; thru pov- 
erty, starvation, scourging and all conceivable denial 
it must be kept under. It and the world were wholly 
bad. Get away from the body and save the soul. 
It was a strenuous attempt to live the simple life." 
This condition, however, was unnatural, and while 
it attracted the people for a long time by its lofty 
ideal, yet it failed as a working basis for them to 
live by, especially as the monks in later years be- 
came so debased themselves and the papacy so ag- 
gressive and self-seeking. It was an ascetic idea and 
narrow, and lost its charm when chivalry supplied 
another and more satisfactory ideal, and when, un- 
der the new intellectual impulse, the trades offered 
a career to so many and there grew up an educated 
class of laymen, poets, lawyers, merchants, clerks, 
etc.f Later on the knight forgot to be the defender 
of the poor, to whom he became even antagonistic, 
and finally '' chivalry left to later ages the bitter 
inheritance of class prejudice, the contemptuous dis- 
like of the well-born for the churl and the trader," J: 
and also the gradual rise of the industrial system 

♦Childhood of English Nation, p. 27. 

t Childhood of English Nation, p. 229, 230. 

J Ibid, pp. 217, 218. 



90 Man — God's Masterpiece 

helped to put an end to the social economy of 
Feudalism.* 

Beauty and use ought to go hand in hand, '' but 
the church in the past has always tried to separate 
them, making of religion a fearsome, repellant thing. 
Walk in the fear of the Lord, crawl and tremble 
and become as a worm, debase your manhood and 
become a hypocrite, such were the teachings of 
those early days." Wesley taught that the carnage 
now t going on among animals is the result of 
Adam's sin. Calvin taught that the nature of chil- 
dren is odious and abominable to God.| That 
there were very few who would be saved, the elect, 
and that they were favored riot because they de- 
served it but because God willed it so. Jonathan 
Edwards called children young vipers, infinitely 
more hateful than vipers to God. 



<( 



Conceived in Sin, O ! wretched State, 

Before we draw our breath, 

The first young pulse begins to beat. 

Iniquity and death. 

My thoughts on awful subjects roll, 

Damnation and the dead. 

What horrors seize a guilty soul upon a dying bed ! 

For day and night in their despite, 

♦Ibid, p. 232. 

t Cosmopolitan Magazine, August, 1909. 

t Institutes of Religion, VI, p. 229. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 91 

Their torment's smoke ascendeth, 
Their pain and grief have no relief, 
Their anguish never endeth. 
Who live to lie in misery, 
And bear eternal woe. 
And live they must while God is just, 
That He may plague them so/' — Old Hymn. 

Cotton Mather lovingly and fearfully impressed 
depravity upon his five-year-old daughter.* 

Equally intolerant were the Protestants in their 
laws — the natural sequences of their thoughts on 
the subject. Cromwell persecuted those who dif- 
fered with him religiously and put whole garrisons 
to the sword in Scotland. John Calvin had John 
Gust beheaded on a charge of attempting to over- 
throw the doctrines of the Calvinistic Church and 
Michael Servetus burned alive for denying the holy 
trinity. 

Even in free America, Baptists and Quakers 
in Massachusetts " were fined, imprisoned, and burnt 
alive." ^* In Virginia all Quakers that disbelieved 
in the Holy Trinity and all persons that refused 
to have their children baptized were scourged, 
confined, and banished or put to death. In Mary- 
land, disbelief in the Holy Trinity was declared to 
be a capital offense." Even in Pennsylvania, Penn's 
charter allowed no atheist to hold a public office and 

♦ Diary quoted in Barret Wendell's Cotton Mather. 



92 Man — God's Masterpiece 

the Puritans at one time even tried to incorporate 
the Bible in the British Constitution.* 

*' The church denounced the drama, dancing and 
all forms of pleasure, forgetting that during the 
middle ages she had fostered it and that even Christ 
Himself had attended the wedding at Cana with 
its dancing and feasting accompaniments." f Be- 
lieving, as church members did, that little in- 
fants were '* conceived in sin and born in iniquity : " 
how did they ever have the courage to breed such 
''monsters'' or did they in their hearts beheve it? 
It was probably for this reason that they had to 
make the birth of Christ miraculous, divine, or other- 
wise, he would come under the category of the 
damned, for no holy child could be born in wed- 
lock — the latter a necessary evil to be deplored said 
St. Chrysostom and that ex-rake St. Augustine. 

Why did they not make Mary divine, and so get 
away entirely from gross humanity, but the Catho- 
lic Church is doing its best to supply that omission. 
But now we are beginning to assert the Godhead in 
man and respect him accordingly. Hereafter every 
time an ass $ brays we are not to mistake it for 
Gabriel's trumpet. 

* Monks, Popes, etc., by John Alberger, pp. 353-356. 

t St. Augustine said : " we were members of a fallen race 
living in a ruined world." 

t " You are a child of the King, made in the image of 
your Father and destined to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, 
which is within you,'* instead of the old *' you are a worm 



Man — God's Masterpiece 93 

As long as we allowed others to guide us we were 
the creatures of their passions and of their inter- 
pretations. Religion, was, therefore, an appeal to 
our passions and our imaginations, not to our rea- 
son, and miracles were invented when the facts 
stated did not agree with the laws of nature, so fore- 
stalling all argument on the subject. As we ad- 
vanced intellectually the change had to come ; we had 
to think for ourselves and our religious ideas will 
be the better and deeper rooted for it. Religious 
toleration and advancement keep apace with better- 
ment in social conditions. To show how great this 
latter has been, I quite from several well-known 
authors. It will better enable us to realize what diffi- 
culties there have been in the way of the people to 
the understanding of a more spiritualized form of re- 
ligious thought, because the average standards have 
been so low. 

Swift, in his Mind in the Making, page 74, says 
that piracy began with the openly patronized sea 
robbers of the Sixteenth Century and even in the 
Eighteenth respectable people were often found who 
were not averse to profiting from ventures of this 
sort. It was a period when men minted their cour- 
age. 

of the dust, a child of the devil, conceived in iniquity and 
begotten in depravity. You are fit only for eternal dam- 
nation and you will burn in Hell unless saved by Grace." 
Eternal Progress. 



94 Man — God's Masterpiece 

The following notes are taken from Swift's Mind 
in the Making : 

'' During the early part of Elizabeth's reign the 
channel was alive with pirates, bearing letters of 
marque from various princes and Huguenot lead- 
ers." '' Queen Elizabeth wore, in her crown, jewels 
that the notorious Francis Drake gave her, and 
created him a knight, when he had committed the 
most atrocious murders that even horrified his law- 
less crew." * 

'' The Governor of North Carolina was found to 
have profited from the famous Bluebeard's forays 
and yet these men had a very poor opinion of pick- 
pockets and housebreakers." f 

" In Germany, toward the close of the middle ages 
robberies were so common and so respectable that 
a cardinal of the Roman Church was able to say that 
all Germany is nothing but a robber's den, and 
among the nobility it is the most respectable call- 
mg. 4. 

" From the Twelfth or Thirteenth Centuries until 
the Sixteenth, the law of the individual prevailed and 
personal contest was the method of judicial settle- 
ment." § 

* Green's History of the English People, p. 415. 
t History of Buccaneers, p. 82, Eugene Wiling. 
$Geschicte der Deutehen Kutten, p. 276, Von der Geor 
Steinhausen. 
§ Ibid, p. 276. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 95 

" Men fought for whoever paid them and when 
this occupation failed, or the compensation was in- 
adequate, the enterprising ones joined robber bands 
or individually held up such as came their way." * 

At one time some of the sons of the richest of 
London citizens used to maraud by night in the 
streets, killing often those they met, breaking into 
houses, etc.f The Anglo Saxons *' were robbers on 
land and pirates on the sea. Their sin was drunken- 
ness, their virtue chastity/' | Prince Rupert after 
his defeat by Cromwell took to piracy on the high 
seas to replenish his depleted pocketbook.§ 

Nor were the labor conditions any better even 
two centuries later, children from five and six years 
upw^ards were apprenticed to factory owners for 
seven years in England (the best of all countries 
for labor) were virtually slaves, wage slaves as 
they worked in close rooms for fourteen hours and 
over, and were given impossible tasks to perform and 
were whipped if they slept. It was not 'til 1819 that 
the age was raised to nine years, and not until 1825 
that hours were limited to twelve a day for these lit- 
tle ones. 1 1 All this at a terrible cost of life and mor- 
ality. 

* Ibid, p. 128. 

t Childhood English Nation, p. 238. 
%K young man's Religion, page 18, McGee Waters. 
§ Pathfinders of the West, p. 138, A. C. Laut. 
II Social Environment and Moral Progress, pp. 50-51, 
A. R. Wallace. 



96 Man — God's Masterpiece 

At this stage of their social advancement, high 
ideals in religion or morality were beyond the un- 
derstanding of the masses, and were openly de- 
rided. The people were ground to the dust by their 
superiors, and by their methods since they have 
intensified the class hatred begotten in early times 
from such examples of oppression as these. Many 
of the castles had besides a dungeon, a salaried 
torturer and executioner.* 

♦ Social Environment and Moral Progress, p. 127, A. R. 
Wallace. 



CHAPTER VI 

It was only in our grandfathers' time that Mes- 
mer was laughed at, even in the grave, but of late 
his teachings have reappeared under the fashionable 
name of hypnotism, so christened by Dr. Braid in 
1877. Psychics were also sneered at then, but to- 
day are taught in such colleges as Harvard and Co- 
lumbia. It is so easy to sneer — the man of lowest 
intellect can readily do it, and to his poor mind it 
conveys an idea of finality that is pleasing to him. 
No wonder that Professor Marvin, the noted alienist 
says : " In dissecting human brains, nothing has more 
thoroughly impressed me than the poverty of think- 
ing, which characterizes the average cerebrum." 
No wonder, also, that surrounded by such unintelli- 
gent masses, to possess genius means isolation only 
too frequently for the possessor. Intellect, however, 
is gradually gaining the ascendency, though feeble its 
power in many of us as yet, and it will finally de- 
throne the passions and imagination, by which we 
have been governed in the past. 

Our senses have ever been unreliable guides, and 
it could not be otherwise, when they are themselves 
so defective, as the scientist has proven to us. Sci- 

97 



98 Man — God's Masterpiece 

entists claim that all material forms * are but differ- 
ing rates of vibration of one universal substance — 
ether; and our senses recognize only certain rates of 
etheric vibrations. f All over and below these rates 
our senses do not cognize, and we must therefor be 
dead to a world of happenings about us. Thus : 
'' The drums of insects' ears, their tubes, etc., are 
so minute that their world of sounds probably begins 
where ours ceases. We begin to hear such vibrations 
as continuous sounds when they equal thirty per 
second, the insect probably beyond three thousand. 
The bluebottle may thus enjoy a whole world of ex- 
quisite music of which we hear nothing." Professor 
Huxley says : " If our ears could catch the murmur 
of the currents whirling in the numberless cells 
which make up every tree we should be stunned as 
with the roar of a great city." % 

The larger part of every created thing is composed 

* Science says the earth revolves at the rate of nineteen 
miles a second and is round, yet our senses stoutly affirm it 
is flat and motionless. The greatest forces of nature are 
the most intangible to the senses. Thought the greatest 
power of all, and so is electricity, etc. " Man began by 
reasoning on the reports of the senses, unsuspicious of error, 
afterwards came others who began to question the accuracy 
of the senses. Lastily came those who denied that accuracy 
altogether." Biographical History of Philosophy, p. 97, 
Lewes. 

t " Nothing rests, everything moves, everything vibrates " 
the Kybalion. 

t Childhood of Religions, by Clod, p. 37. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 99 

of three gases, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, each 
of which by itself is invisible, tasteless and without 
smell.* 

Between sound and heat are a lot of vibrations we 
never hear. '' The differences in rate of vibration 
produce different colors. Thus the first color reg- 
istered by the sight is a dull red, about four hundred 
billions of vibrations per second; more yet a clearer 
red, then an orange, a yellow, green, blue, indigo and 
then a violet, the latter being eight hundred billions 
vibrations a second. But lower than dark red and 
higher than violet are to be found light rays invisi- 
ble to the human eye, the ultra red and ultra violet 
respectively. These may be registered by instru- 
ments, however. We do not see the photographic 
rays, sunburn rays and X-rays are only visible by an 
instrument." f 

Our five senses we know grew from one to five, 
as they were needed sufficiently to be followed by a 
strong desire and need for them and a divine unrest 
and groping for them until they appeared and were 
finally perfected, and the process is still continuing. 
Is it not therefore a logical sequence, as this has been 
going on for ages, that other senses will develop 
and we will need them if being part of a perfect 
whole we are to develop the God within ? 

♦Ibid, p. 40. 

t Short Chapters on Science by M. M. Williams. Our 
recognition of colors have expanded wonderfully of late 
years. 



100 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Why should not man, who is becoming more 
spiritual, gradually come into the possession of a 
psychic sense, that would open up to him perhaps 
another world? The desire is fast growing within 
us (probably foreshadowing what is to come) and 
surely under the law of demand and supply the 
means of its gratification cannot be far off. 

Prof. William James, in his Varieties of Religious 
Experience and Du Maurice Bucke, in his Cosmic 
Consciousness, and others claim that we are develop- 
ing a sixth sense that will connect man with the 
spiritual plane of existence. 

'' Many of the leading thinkers, especially among 
university educators, now admit the existence of a 
sixth sense in the human mind, which is nothing less 
than the power to discern different phases of the 
subjective or unseen. This sixth sense has nothing 
to do with the mystical, and as generally understood, 
has nothing to do with the unseen world. The sixth 
sense is simply the finer preceptions in man. In 
brief, it is an extension, so to speak, of the most 
delicate, the most penetrating and far-reaching facul- 
ties in the human mind, as we advance in civiliza- 
tion." * 

We are drawing upon the unseen constantly, for 
instance for our music, our poetry, our ideals. Con- 
sequently, we live very close to it, and therefore why 

* Progress Magazine, September, 1910. 



Man — God's Masterpiece loi 

should we not sense it more keenly than we have? 
Science assures us that we may to-day be dwelling 
in a world filled with other people, yet not know it. 
Where the rhythm favors, she says, bodies can pass 
freely through each other. Jevons, in Principles of 
Science, says : " For anything that we can know to 
the contrary, there may be, right here and now, 
passing thru us and this world, some planet invisi- 
ble to us, with mountains, oceans, lakes, rivers, cities 
and inhabitants." Dr. Young says : '' There are 
worlds, perhaps, prevading each other unseen and 
unknown in the same space." * Surely it must be 
intended that some day we should see and know 
these things and benefit thereby. 

The Minneapolis Journal, February 3, 1909, 
says : '^ Ether fills all space that is not occupied 
by heavenly bodies, and thru it they travel with- 
out friction. Yet it is denser than any known 
material and more rigid than steel. (Yet our 
imperfect senses do not cognize it.) It is also 
enormously elastic for it transmits light one hun- 
dred eighty thousand miles a second. We postu- 
late ether, we do not demonstrate it. We have not 
seen or felt ether. We have never come in contact 
with it or an atom, a molecule or an ion of elec- 
tricity, nor has the greatest telescope ever shown it. 
We define them to exist by an intellectual process 

* Prof. J. P. Conklin in Chemistry and Religion, 



102 Man — God's Masterpiece 

only (the whole theory of chemistry is built on the 
existence of atoms of ether). Yet some scientists 
still say do not believe what you cannot see or hear. 
The mind is here seen to act direct, without the 
use of its agents, the senses, and so the mind postu- 
lates a continuation of life hereafter." 

None of the inanimate qualities transmitted to us 
by the senses exist in Nature, for this world is abso- 
lutely quiet and devoid of these qualities. It is only 
when certain delicate nerves are touched in a living 
being, and vibrations start up communications with 
the brain, that color, sound, odor, etc., exist. Re- 
move the brain or dull it sufficiently and they all 
cease. Coming, as they do, second hand to us, it 
is no wonder that our impressions of these qualities 
are defective and that we so often follow the shadow, 
mistaking it for the substance."^ 

Space and time are creatures of the physical 
world, they do not exist in the mental realm or 
with God. Gradually as he ascends higher on the 
intellectual and spiritual plane, man is taking cog- 
nizance of things he never dreamed of before. This 
will involve the enthronement of a spiritual in the 
place of a material consciousness. The intuitive 
faculties will act direct, and the God within will ex- 
press himself then unerringly. 

* " In some cases where the sense of touch has been 
greatly developed, the nerve matter in the ends of the fingers 
closely resembles the ^ay matter of the brain," 



Man — God's Masterpiece 103 

At this stage will undoubtedly occur a spirit- 
ualization of the physical that will refine it greatly 
and make of it a thing of beauty, for the God 
within will show more plainly, especially in man's 
smile and the love-light from his eyes. His vi- 
sion of the world itself will also become keener, 
and he will see in it spiritual beauties that he never 
dreamed of before. Then also will he plainly realize 
that he has heretofore mistaken too often the 
shadow for the substance, that everything physical 
is simply a reflection of the spirit within and he 
will read correctly the messages the senses transmit. 
If we could compare man of the Thirteenth Century, 
brutish and bestial, with man of to-day, we would 
readily see that this transformation has already 
progressed considerably. 



CHAPTER VII 

Our subject title is so comprehensive that we 
needs must discuss a multitude of subjects and now- 
having devoted as much space as we can afford to 
the historical aspect of our subject, we will pass on 
to another phase, the conscious and subconscious 
mind. Professor William James of Harvard (de- 
ceased) says: "The subconscious self is nowadays 
a well accredited psychological entity." 

Man's mind functions on two planes, the objective 
and subjective, conscious and unconscious, or volun- 
tary and involuntary, whichever we prefer to call 
them. " The subconscious mind exists independ- 
ently of any specialized organ though its main seat 
of operation seems to be directed from the Medulla 
Oblongata or the spinal cord. It antedates the brain 
by millions of years, is the result of organic evolu- 
tion, the seat of instinct and intuition and is per- 
haps a part of the universal spirit individualized, 
the soul of man perhaps." * It records all that man 

* Evolution of the Human Soul, Andersen : From the 
subconscious comes clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, 
prevision (the power to transcend time), telekmisis (the 
power to influence physical objects without physical con- 

104 



Man — God's Masterpiece 105 

has ever seen or heard or read, and suggestion is the 
key that opens up its treasures ; is constantly suscep- 
tible to control by suggestion; that it is incapable of 
inductive reasoning; that it has control of all the 
functions, conditions and sensations of the body, says 
Hudson. He also says the subjective mind is the 
soul.* 

The subjective receiving suggestions from the 
objective opens up a vast field for the improve- 
ment of man in the future, a field that so far has 
been sadly neglected. The conscious mind located 
in the brain cognizes happenings and passes its 
knowledge on to the subconscious to be stored there 
for future reference. Its highest function is reason- 
ing.! So man's every act, his thoughts even, reg- 
ister in the subconscious mind and there go to form 
character. Nature does its greatest v^orks with 
infinitesimably small agents so is character evolved 
out of the little happenings of life. 

The great decisions of life rest entirely on this 
substructure. We are, therefore, the result of pre- 
vious thinking, and of the thought of our ancestors 
as well. Health and disease are often the result of 
these past or present thoughts, passed on to the sub- 
conscious self and exhibiting themselves later in 

tact), and self -projection (the power of a man to make 
himself visible at a distance). Ibid, p. 64. 

* Hudson's Law of Psyphic Phenomena, pp. 25, 26, 29. 

t Evolution of the Human Soul, Andersen. 



io6 Man — God's Masterpiece 

health or sickness. Hence the vast importance of 
guarding one's thoughts, especially as all acts are the 
result of prior thinking.* The subconscious self is 
in touch with the source of all spiritual power, all 
knowledge, and there man is potentially divine. 

Originally all mind was subconscious, and it took 
ages before it became conscious of itself and acted 
on the conscious plane, thus allowing the power of 
choice on man's part and making him a responsible 
creature, eventually controlling his own fate, as pre- 
viously stated. The objective mind creates the de- 
sire, the subconscious expresses it. 

In our subconscious are recorded our past lives 
and present and the myriad stages of evolution 
that have taken place. When the conscious mind 
can draw freely upon the subconscious, may we 
not then look back upon the past, and review 
our lives in the different periods of our evolution? 
Also may it not be possible that from this source 
the genius draws his inspiration, he having made 
a better connection with his subconscious than we 
are capable of? The one is the world of experi- 
ence, the other the world of self -consciousness, ac- 
cording to Fichte. In Hypnotism, the subconscious 

♦The subconscious you never realize, yet psychologists 
say that only five percent of our mental processes are con- 
scious, the rest are the result of habits acquired through the 
ages and acting through the subconscious self. To get the 
Ibest results these two should act in unison. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 107 

mind is acted upon by the conscious mind of an- 
other. 

Telepathy or thought transference from one mind 
to another gives an exact expression of one's 
thoughts whereas speech is faulty and when in 
general use, as being the best in time it should 
be, will prove to be the means of the greatest 
moral uplift, that we have ever experienced. 
When everyone's thoughts can be read, w^e will all 
start in to purify things at the fountainhead. We 
will then cease to have thoughts that we are ashamed 
of, and deceit, lying and uncharitableness and all 
crime will then be things of the past, as will most of 
the misunderstandings between man and man. It 
seems reasonable to suppose that this may be the 
means of communications of those in Heaven. 

To show that animals have this telephatic power 
better developed than man. Walter Atkinson, in 
Mind Power, tells of an ant taken prisoner and con- 
fined on the inside of a building sixteen inches thick. 
The ant's friends congregated on the outside of the 
building, opposite to where he was and when he was 
moved to different parts of the building they would 
always gather outside and exactly opposite to him. 
Atkinson also cites the case of two foreign moths 
introduced into England. One escaped many miles 
from the resting-place of the other, and the latter 
was taken away on a railway journey. This one, a 
female, was put in a small cage and left out that 



'io8 Man — God's Masterpiece 

night and in the morning the lost male was found 
clinging to the cage. 

I quote the following from Progress Magazine for 
September, 1909: "In the Eighteenth Century all 
sorts of heretical schools became popular, a natural 
reaction from the excessive religious fervor of the 
previous years, and the American and French Revo- 
lutions shook old ideas. During the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury the advances of physical science made still fur- 
ther inroads into the orthodox teachings of the past. 
Men like Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer 
began to exert a remarkable influence upon the pub- 
lic mind, and orthodoxy was put square upon the 
defensive in a manner never before known. 

The higher criticism of to-day goes further than 
the infidelism of 1850. The theory of Evolution 
and Descent of Man, upsetting as it did the theo- 
logians' miraculous creation of man, broke down 
many of the old barriers and the works of Spencer 
and others tore down still more,"*" and a strong 
tendency toward materialism set in, which many 
supposed was destined to sweep before it all the old 
line of defenses of orthodoxy. 

But strange to say, toward the close of the 

* " The recognition of these two facts — that there were 
minions of heathen and that this universe was a very 
large place (and the earth a mere grain of dust in it) — 
really upset the old theology." Free Thinking and Plain 
Speaking, p. 105, Stephen, 



Man — God's Masterpiece 109 

century a reaction took place, the old religious in- 
stinct, and the desire for spiritual things has not 
been destroyed and the tendency toward ma- 
terialism ceased and to-day materialism sinks 
" into a crude disbelief in whatever lies out of 
the senses grasp." Also *' Materialism in the proper 
sense of the word has died because it is too ab- 
surd a doctrine even for philosophers/' * LeConte 
says : '' xA.theism is the most illogical form of meta- 
physics. The laws they formulate must necessarily 
imply the existence of a lawgiver, call him force or 
God as you prefer/' Science made a great stride 
when it no longer demanded as proof something 
which could be shown to the senses and when it ac- 
cepted as well the truths of psychology. The soul 
of man and its relations to its maker, God, the basis 
of all religion, cannot be tested by the senses alone ; 
also consciousness, personality, memory, inspiration, 
etc., are all unprovable by chemical analysis.f 

" But the pendulum in its backward swing did not 
carry popular thought back to the old orthodox 
standards; these had been discarded once and for 
all. There was a need for a new set of conceptions, 

♦Free Thinking, etc., p. 102, Stephen. 

tNo longer do we believe with Schopenhauer that an- 
nihilation is the only hope of humanity. "The reaction 
against skepticism came through transcendentalism; it 
stemmed the tide." Transcendentalism in New England. 
Frothingham, p. 188. " It also affected the orthodox chris- 
tian interpretation,*' p. 107. 



no Man — God's Masterpiece 

the old did not satisfy; and the demand created the 
supply, and hence the present condition of things. 
Fining the vacuum created by the evaporation of the 
old orthodox dogmas, we find the ideals of ancient 
Greek philosophy mingling with the still older teach- 
ings of the Hindu and through all is heard the note 
of mysticism, which has ever prevaded human 
thought in every religion, every time, and every 
race." 

The discarded and long reviled teachings of the 
Gnostics, that body of Christian mystics, have arisen 
again and under new names have found popular 
favor in the minds of the public of the Twentieth 
Century. The teachings of the old Hindu Vedant- 
ism, given a new impetus by Emerson and the Tran- 
scendentalists, find a prominent place in the advanc- 
ing thought of to-day. 

Max Mueller and Rev. Chas. D. Briggs, both 
great church authorities, assert that inspiration from 
God was not limited to Hebrew prophets or Christ 
and his disciples. Even bigoted St. Augustine says : 
*' There is no religion which amongst its many errors 
does not contain some real divine truths." * 

" Plato and others have sprung into favor. Ma- 
terialism has been shown the door for the time being 
and advanced Idealism has taken the center of the 
field of human philosophical thought. Yes, not only 

* Evolution of Religion, p. 86, Bierer. 



Man — God's Masterpiece iii 

advanced Idealism but even a rarified Pantheism — 
Idealistic Pantheism, not the crude Pantheism, which 
insists that Deity is but the total of natural objects 
and forces — but the higher phase of Pantheism 
v^hich insists that Deity is manifested in all natural 
things — the doctrine of the Immanent Deity; and 
this even in its most idealistic sense for the advance 
v^ave of modern philosophical thought, certainly 
holds to the idea that the universe is in realty an 
idea or a series of ideas in the mind of God." "^ 

No religion in the author's mind is acceptable that 
cannot stand the severest scientific and philosophical 
analyses together with the test of the ages. Truth 

* " The movement really began one hundred years before 
when the hold of Calvinism was suddenly shaken and 
weakened, and which brought the New England mind to 
a new interest in Armenianism and Arianism, and which 
served to prepare the cradle for Unitarianism, which 
was afterwards born. Transcendentalism was the natural 
spiritual child of the great spiritual unrest, which had 
preceded it by about a century and which wrought a great 
change in religious and philosophical thought and ideals 
in New England, which section undoubtedly at that time 
was the intellectual center of the country. It was the 
offspring of liberal Christian thought combined with Neo- 
Platonism, Oriental, Religious and Occult philosophy. It 
was perhaps nearer akin to what philosophy calls mysti- 
cism than any other one form of thought. Emerson holds 
that God is the universal substance from which the Universe 
is formed, which holds the mind of all ; the universal spirit 
which is immanent in all men." Progress Magazine, Oc- 
tober, 1909. 



112 Man — God's Masterpiece 

alone can meet the requirements and religion must of 
course be true. Much of Orthodoxy, as we have 
known it in the past, cannot and must therefore be 
cast aside,* and the sooner the better for error only 
impedes progress. What the brightest minds in the 
world past and present have proclaimed as truth 
has been gathered together under the name of New 
or Advanced Thought, not as taught by everyone but 
by the wiser few, for there are many ideas expressed 
under this term that are simply the stupid vaporings 
of shallow minds. 

In the Nineteenth Century, America had reached 
the stage in her religious development when Puritani- 
cal doctrines had long ceased to satisfy and some- 
thing else was needed. 

Emerging from the selfish age, we were enter- 
taining the idea of the brotherhood of man and 
our love for him was prompting us to reject 
the theory of hell fire and eternal damnation for 
our fellow-man, our brother. The doctrine that 
^ve are slaves scourged by an outraged taskmaster 
became revolting to us. In consequence f to-day all 

* " A distinctive modern theology has begun to supersede 
the Medieval and to square religious thinking with modern 
learning." Introductory to Getting Together, Rev. J. M. 
Whiton. "Consciousness is a manifestation of the eternal 
energy within us and it is to this consciousness we must go 
for any understanding of God." 

t Philip Brooks, himself a clergyman, said: Spiritual 
Significance, by L. Whiting, p. 270. "The world religions 



Man — God's Masterpiece 113 

religions are now in the scholar's crucible, from 
which they will come out purer and stronger for 
having been purged of medieval myths, dogmas, 
false teachings and creeds of all kinds. 

Man made creeds and material idols, begot by 
ignorance have ever been two of the greatest stum- 
bling-blocks in the path of spiritual progress. They 
will be stripped of the parasitic growth of ages, a 
growth which in many cases may have been adopted 
for the sake of expediency and utility but which 
has now lost all elements of utility and being false 
greatly retards religious expansion. Not until this 
is done will we have a religious belief that will 
stand the test of absolute truth, and not until then 
will man's religion be carried into and become a 
part of his business and social life and the golden 
rule prevail. 

Do not be limited in your religious thoughts as 
you have been by the edicts of Councils and Synods, 
the bulls and edicts of popes, the statements and 
writings of bishops, priests, and ministers coming 
out of the shadowy past of the Dark Ages when 
man (viewed in the light of to-day) was ignorant 
and superstitious, fanatical and revengeful and 

have failed and are failing to-day. They have been too 
much either mystic exaltations or hard methods of econ- 
omy. Very surely there is something better which they 
might be by being both. Such the complete religion must 
be when it is perfectly revealed." 



114 Man — God's Masterpiece 

often with marked criminal tendencies of the past 
ages. 

Of what use is our intellect and the learning be- 
queathed to us by past ages if we cannot under the 
stronger, purer light of our time discuss and reason 
these things out for ourselves? In the light of 
modern knowledge we have changed our viewpoint 
and old interpretations are no longer tenable."^ 

Ex-President Eliot of Harvard, speaking of the 
coming religion says : ^' The New Thought of God 
will be its most characteristic element. This ideal 
will comprehend the Jewish Jehovah, the Christian 
Universal Father, and the modern physicist's omni- 
present and exhaustless energy, and the biological 
conception of a vital force. The Infinite Spirit per- 
vades the Universe just as the spirit of a man per- 
vades his body and acts consciously and uncon- 
sciously in every atom of it. The Twentieth Cen- 
tury will accept literally and implicitly St. PauFs 

* The despotism of dogmas and the disturbing influence 
of unchanging creeds made Prof. WilHston Walker assert 
of the Eighteenth Century that " while religious service 
was largely attended in America, it was due only to habit 
and external formality, the spirit had departed," and it 
is true of to-day; how few really enjoy going to church? 
Prof. Elliott says : " Character is the test of any religion." 
It should be and is its supreme requirement. If so, and it 
seems reasonable, can we not improve greatly in our 
present teachings ? The female of all animals, including man, 
retain primitive characteristics longer than the male ; there- 
fore, woman clings longer to her faith than man. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 115 

statement '' In Him we live, and move, and have our 
being '' and God is that vital atmosphere or inces- 
sant illumination. The new religion is therefore 
monotheistic. Its god being the one infinite force, 
but this one God is not withdrawn or removed but 
indwelling and especially dwelling in every living 
creature. 

Harold Bolce * says that the professors of the 
great universities are all teaching that a ''New 
Revelation is quickening this age." He says that 
Prof. R. M. Wenley of Michigan, claims that we 
have every reason to anticipate great changes; also 
Prof. Browne of Boston University says that the 
new religion will not deal with signs and w^onders. 
President Hadley of Yale, claims that the new mo- 
rality opens to man the opportunity of choosing the 
unselfish side. Bolce says: ''The professors be- 
lieve that the mightiest movement the world has 
witnessed is now under way — a movement destined 
to sw^eep away the mass of ritual which has kept 
man from a clear vision of God." " Our new teach- 
ings must be less academic and more practical, less 
ritual and more works, less theology (theorizing) 
and more practical everyday religion." 

From 1830 to 1850 occurred this change in our 
religious aspect that has since entered into and con- 
siderably changed the line of religious thought of 

♦Cosmopolitan Magazine, August, 1909. 



ii6 Man — God's Masterpiece 

our Christian nations. Ralph Waldo Emerson, that 
prince of Idealists, was its chief exponent and since 
his day it has been somewhat changed and greatly 
strengthened by discoveries in Psychology and the 
spiritual phase given to the doctrine of evolution by 
later writers.* 

Transcendentalism, as we now define it, means the 
temple of the Living God in the Soul.f Needless to 
say, the movement met with fierce denunciation from 
the Press and the Pulpit. | Those who have con- 
ceived and carried out great ideas always have been 
laughed at. Benjamin Franklin's paper proving the 
identity of lightning with electricity was the subject 

* " Channing, Ripley, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Brown- 
son and Hedge were all members of the Transcendental Club 
formed for the discussion of Pantheism, Mysticism and 
kindred subjects and Theodore Parker and others con- 
tributed articles to their organ, the Dial, Kant, Jacobi, 
Fichte, Novalis, Schelling, Hegel, Schlemmacher, de Witte, 
Madame de Stael, Cousin, Coleridge and Carlyle taught 
German Transcendentalism Her poets (Ger- 
many's), her artists, her musicians and her thinkers have 
been more or less Pantheists. " Biographical History 
of Philosophy, p. 709, Lewes. Kant's Critique of Pure Rea- 
son, as well as his other critiques contained the germs of 
the Idealists theories of the Nineteenth Century." His- 
tory of Philosophy, p. 475, Weber. 

t " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and the 
Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" St. Paul aslo says that 
what may be known of God is manifest in man. 

$ History of Philosophy, Weber, 



Man — God's Masterpiece ii^ 

of great merriment at a meeting of the Royal So- 
ciety.* 

Harold Bolce f says: ''That the college profes- 
sors subscribing to doctrines identical with or akin 
to the philosophy embraced in the New Thought 
Crusade, in the Emanuel Movement, and in Mrs. 
Eddy's postulates, are not carried away by sudden 
mania but are studying new forces in religion, just 
as they experiment to determine new reactions in 
chemistry, is evidenced to the student who gives at- 
tention to the contemporary academic gospel." 

New Thought is a return to the Idealism of olden 
times, as taught by Confucius, Krishna, Buddha, 
Christ, Socrates, Epictetus, and others. It is only 
within the last fifty or sixty years that the leading 
Hindu works have been translated into English, 
yet the evidence is indisputable that some of their 
ideas must have reached western minds. 

Eternal Progress for December, 1909, says: 
'' Max Mueller and Paul Druessen have borne 
evidence that in the Vedas and the Upanishads may 
be found the seed thoughts for every philosophical 
conception that the w^estern mind has ever evolved. 
Victor Conscius says that India contains the whole 
history of Philosophy in a nutshell. Sir Monier 

* ** Idealism has been laughed at, written at, talked at, 
shrieked at. That it has been understood, is not so appar- 
ent." Biographical History of Philosophy, p. 549, Lewes. 

t Cosmopolitan for July, 1909. 



ii8 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Williams says: ''Indeed if I may be allowed the 
anachronism, the Hindus were Spinosites more 
than two thousand years before the existence of 
Spinoza and Darwinites before Darwin and Evo- 
lutionists many centuries before the doctrine of 
Evolution had been adopted by the scientists of 
our time." Prof. Hopkins says: '* that Plato 
was full of Sankhyan thought worked out by 
him but taken from Pythagoras. Before the 
Sixth Century, B. C, all the religio-philosophical 
ideas of Pythagoras were current in India." Christ 
is without doubt the greatest idealist that ever lived. 
He gave up his life for it, and no one, not even the 
disciples could understand him. 

The main points of the new interpretation are 
an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent power — 
the creator of all things. Being omniscient he 
knows all and all knowledge therefore comes from 
him. As he is omnipotent, all power is his; there- 
fore all manifestations of power whether for good 
or evil are manifestations of him. He is omnipres- 
ent, therefore present in all persons, atoms and 
spirits, in all places and at all times and if he is pres- 
ent everywhere, therefore there is room for nothing 
else, so everything must be a part of Deity — a part 
of a mighty whole — and so are all related.* So 

* Advanced Course in Yoga Philosophy. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 119 

science claims there is but one substance, one force 
only manifesting differently.* 

God is omniscient, all-wise, all-knowing, that he 
is the sum total of all knowledge and therefore must 
act wisely and justly for knowing all, he cannot 

* The ideas embodied in this note are from Advanced 
Course in Yoga Philosophy, Vol. 2, pp. 256, 287. " All phil- 
osophers, metaphysicians, scientists and theologians agree 
there is some cause for all the phenomena of the world, an 
ultimate, absolute first cause only, and it comprises all there 
is or ever will be, for it is all. Everything else is but a 
part of it, a manifestation of it, related to it. The meta- 
physician calls it mind, the philosopher life, the scientist 
force or energy and the theologian God, and as each is 
searching for the same thing, they must all in time agree, 
as there can be only one true solution — one absolute. It 
is omnipresent and if it is all there can be no place outside 
of the all. It must be everywhere — space, time, matter, 
mind, energy, etc., all are but relative manifestations of 
this absolute. If the absolute is all, it must be omnipo- 
tent, possessing all the power there is, for there is no 
other source from which power can come. It must also 
be omniscient, knowing everything, for it is everything. 
The absolute must be eternal without beginning or end. 
If it had a beginning it must have preceded from some- 
thing else and therefore be not an absolute but a relative. 
It would mean cause back of cause ad infinitum, for 
everything must have a cause and it is easier to conceive 
of a causeless cause the absolute than cause after cause 
forever. There can be no cause outside of the absolute for 
there is no outside, the absolute being omnipresent. If 
cause and effect were infinities there can be no beginning, 
and a thing w^ithout a beginning can have no cause. Cause 
and effect are relative terms, not necessary to the absolute, 
we create them because we cannot grasp the idea of the 



I20 Man — God's Masterpiece 

make mistakes; therefore to him we must go for all 
knowledge and which has existed from all time and 
which we simply attract and call our own.* We 
behold his manifestations in matter (substance), 

absolute, as we also create time and space. The absolute 
thinks in terms of infinity and eternity. The absolute is 
indivisable because it is all, the whole thing. We may speak 
of a part of the whole but it's simply our limitations. All 
parts so-called are in touch with the whole and all is one. 
It is unchangeable because it cannot change without losing 
itself and this is inconceivable. Being perfect it cannot be 
improved upon. There is no outside, nothing that can affect 
it in any way and being everything it cannot change into 
anything else. Cause and effect cannot affect it, being re- 
lative only, mere tools of the absolute. That which is not 
absolute must be relative (an imperfect, incomplete view or 
aspect of the whole thing), be related to it or else nothing 
at all. Man himself is absolute and relative, the Spirit in 
him, the real self is absolute and it is surrounded by the 
relative as matter, energy or force and mind. These are the 
three great manifestations of the absolute which itself is 
unmanifest. These, the Yogi say, however, are not really 
three manifestations but only three phases of manifesta- 
tions, matter being a grosser form of energy or force, which 
in its turn is a grosser form of mind and this latter in its 
most sublimated form reaches the plane of spirit. Advanced 
scientists are now realizing that matter must be a grosser 
form of force but are not so advanced as yet to realize 
that mind in its sublimated form reaches the plane of spirit. 
Matter must have always existed, as it could not have been 
made out of nothing. Also it can never be destroyed, as 
something can never become nothing." 

* I would advise all students to read the Yoga Publica- 
tions of Chicago. Advanced Course in Yoga Philosophy, 
yol. 2, p. 160. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 121 

force (energy), mind (intelligence), and spirit, and 
our preception of him is limited to these phases of 
his manifestation; the absolute, we can never see. 
" Lift the stone and thou shalt find me, cleave the 
wood and there am I.'' The blade of grass growing 
represents matter, force, and intelligence, all mani- 
festations of God; therefore is God present and di- 
recting the growth of the tiny blade of grass as well 
as the individual.* 

The indwelling immanent God (hence all reform 
comes from within) in living men an ever-present 
friend and helper as against the miracle working 
deity. The father as against the austere ruler, as 
sovereigns become less potent with us so the analogy 
of God as a sovereign (and a despotic one also) is 
being superseded gradually by the idea of God the 
Father. We are growing better and the measure of 
our growth is the changing conception of our god. 
We are changing the political sovereign for the more 
spiritual conception of the father. 

That everything is one thing and that thing is 
God. Seneca says : '' God is near you, with you, 
in you: there dwells within us a holy spirit, the 
watcher and guardian of all we do, good or 
bad; according as we deal with Him! does He 
deal with us." " Above all things reverence your- 

♦ Advanced Course, Yoga Philosophy. 



122 Man — God's Masterpiece 

self/' Pythagoras. ''But God is within/'* and 
He all good,t and that man's powers are those 
of God's and that he is a potential God, that he 
must act in unison with the whole of which he is 
a part, and therefore have at his disposal that 
universal energy and power which is of God and 
therefore irresistible; that his real heredity is from 
God and His (God's) environment is the one that 
will count in the end ; that he is in touch with all na- 
ture, between whom and himself there is a common 
kinship, having the same father. *' It is only the 
man who thinks he is divine that is going to measure 
up to the statue of a perfect man." | '' He called 
them Gods unto whom the word of God came." 

As the seed has within itself all the possibilities of 
the tree, so man, God's greatest creation § is not a 

♦Discourses of Epictetus, p. 49, Antonius (111-5) says 
this. "The God who is in thee." Ibid, 49. "The spirit 
beareth witness to our spirits that we are the children of 
God." The Greeks believed in an indwelling God in the early 
Christian centuries, and it was a cardinal point of the Stoics 
as well. Christ says : " The Father that dwelleth in you, he 
doeth the works." St. Paul says : " It is the God that 
worketh in you, both to will and to work for his good plea- 
sure." 

t " The riddle of the universe is understood, only by him 
who feels that God is good." Whittier. 

t In the Sunlight of Health, p. 66, Patterson. 

§ Sir John Herschel says : " We have evidence of a 
thought, an intelligence working within our own organiza- 
tion, distinct from our own personality." Liebnitz claimed 
that everything from an atom up was a soul. The poet 



Man — God's Masterpiece 123 

sinner and a failure, that such an idea is a reflection 
on the power and wisdom of God but that he has 
within himself all the possibilities of his creator and 
of the constituents of the earth which he inhabits. 
He has the body of the animal but the soul is of God. 
In order to live on earth man must have a physical 
body composed (as it is) of animal, vegetable and 
mineral constituents in order to keep in touch with 
his surroundings; also back of these must be the 
spirit which pervades everything and directs all. 
The belief that God's method of creation is the 
method of evolution also. 

It is religion as Christ taught it minus the 
dogmas and creeds that have grown up around it 
and deprived it of much of its spirituality. What 

Masnan Jalahe 'd Din, of Balkh (A. D. 1207-73), says: 
" Because he that is praised is, in fact, only one, in this 
respect all religions are only one religion." " Said I 
not ye are Gods?" "All sons of man are sous of God, 
nor limps a beggar that is nobly born, nor wears a slave 
a yoke, nor Czar a crown; that makes him more or less 
than just a man." Grant Allen says that the universe 
known to us consists wholly of mind and matter is a 
doubtful, uncertain inference of human intelligence. Presi- 
dent E. Andrews of Brown University says : " Daily more 
evident is it that matter is not primordial but a func- 
tion of spirit." Dr. S. R. Calthrop says : '' Matter is a 
mode of motion of spirit." Don't Worry, by T. F. Seward. 
" If a man should be able to assent to this doctrine as 
he ought that we are all sprung from God in an especial 
manner and that God is the Father both of men and gods." 
Discourses of Epictetus, p. 12. 



124 Man — God's Masterpiece 

distorted ideas are the following taken from 
Articles of Religion of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church? Art. ii. *' We are accounted righteous 
before God only for the merit of our Lord and 
Savior Jesus Christ by faith and not by our own 
deservings." Art. 13. ''Works done before the 
grace of Christ and the inspiration of His spirit 
are not pleasant to God forasmuch as they spring 
not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make 
men meet to receive grace or deserve grace of con- 
gruity, yea rather for that they are not done as God 
hath willed and commanded them to be done, we 
doubt not that they have the nature of sin," and this 
however noble the deed. 

Matter may take upon itself a thousand forms,* 
each one higher than the preceding, but all progress 
comes from the unseen, the Spirit back of it. All 
material things are the outgrowth of unseen spirit- 
ual forces. '' Matter and Force do nothing of 
themselves; it is the working of a power, which 
reveals itself in higher and higher forms until 
it shows forth as spirit within our conscious- 
ness." t '^ The Universe is a harmonious whole, 

* The chemical composition of the diamond, lampblack 
and charcoal are practically the same; oil of roses and 
coal gas are each composed of four atoms of hydrogen and 
four of carbon, their sole difference is their rate of vi- 
bration. 

t Christian Theism, p. 224. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 125 

the soul of which is God/' J " All that exists or all 
that seems to exist is only Brahma/' f 

Man's limitations are those he creates in his own 
mind from want of knowledge or fear, the latter the 
result of past experiences. Christ said : '' God is 
Spirit/' also " that ye are the children of God," 
therefore spirits (not bodies). Even Voltaire said: 
'' God we must look for in ourselves alone, if he 
exists the human heart is his throne/' These two 
things are mingled in the generation of man, body 
in common with the animals and reason and intelli- 
gence in common with the gods/' % 

Athanasius said : '' Even we may become gods 
walking about in the flesh/' Gautama said : " Peo- 
ple are in bondage because they have not yet re- 
moved the idea of doing away with all sense of 
separateness/' The Hindus hold that all souls are a 
part of Brahma's spiritual nature individuated by 
their connection with bodily forms. § 

We are a part of God manifest in the flesh, as is 
all life and energy, and being a part only are there- 
fore never the equal of the whole. And all nature 
is but a manifestation of Deity; being gods our 
brothers likewise are gods and we are all part of 
one whole; injure a part and you injure the whole, 

* Keplar. 

t Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, p. 145, Lilly. 

J Discourses of Epictetus, p. 13. 

§ Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, p. 144, Lilly. 



126 Man — God's Masterpiece 

and this reacts on you personally. Jesus recognized 
the divine paternity * that we all share when he 
said to those who told him that his mother and 
brothers waited without : '' Behold my mother and 
my brethren/' stretching out his hand towards 
those gathered about him, ** Whosoever shall do 
the will of my Father which is in Heaven, the same 
is my brother and sister and mother." 

The new conception of religion does away en- 
tirely with those goblins of the past, chance and 
miracle. It gives a philosophical, scientific religion 

* " He has made of one blood (life) all people who 
dwell on the face of the earth." "The fullness of the 
Godhead is in every soul." Genesis. Jesus says : " He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father." An early Chris- 
tian father said : " He that hath seen his brother hath 
seen his God," meaning in each case the Divine within 
which is the real man — the ego. "Be ye therefore perfect 
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." So 
" God created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him." Genesis, 1:27. "And the Lord formed 
man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nos- 
trils the breath of life and man became a living soul." 
Genesis, 2: 7. "Man is of divine origin and his destiny is 
to become the image of God." Child and Child Nature, 
Buelow, p. 13. "There is not a single product of nature 
that does not pass into man or at any rate stand in rela- 
tion to him. Ibid, p. 14. " There is iron in his blood and 
chalk in his bones." " Behold what manner of love the 
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called 
the sons of God." 1 John, 3 :1. " And hereby we know 
that He abideth in us by the spirit which He hath given 
us." I John, 3:24. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 127 

instead of an appeal to our emotions and recognizes 
that our ultimate aim in life is happiness, but that 
can only be attained by working for the advance- 
ment of the whole, of which each mdividual is a 
part; that heaven and hell are states of mind and 
not places, if God is within there must heaven be 
also and that there is no penal settlement in the 
next world, our reasoning now assures us."^ 

That our life is one with the Divine and true wis- 
dom, therefore consists in our expressing in our 
daily life God's thoughts and acts — to cease walking 
in darkness and be guided by the light from within. 
Man is destined to communion with God, his long- 
ing for something better proves that and why should 
he not aspire to partake of and understand the 
highest ? t 

Emerson says: '' The lesson of life is to believe 
what the years and centuries say, against the 
hours to resist the usurpation of particulars, to 
penetrate to their catholic sense. It teaches spirit- 
ual monism, the inherent unity of everything, 
of one divine will as is shown in mind and mat- 
ter." Wallace, LeConte in his Evolution and its 
relation to Religious Thought, Henry Drummond, 

* *' He that enters the service of mankind has entered 
the service of God." " He that loveth not his brethren 
how can he love God?" "The heaven ye seek, the hell ye 
fear, are within ourselves alone." Whittier. 

t Child and Child Nature, p. 21, Buelow. 



128 Man — God's Masterpiece 

in his Ascent of Man, and Sir Oliver Lodge, hesi- 
tate not to introduce a divine life power into their 
biological origins/' * Centuries ago a mystic wrote 
" What'er thou lovest, man, that to become, thou 
must, — God if thou lovest God, dust if thou lovest 
dust." " All are but part of one stupendous whole, 
whose body nature is and God the soul." 

" Man and everything animate or inanimate has 
been evolved out of condensed cosmic matter, and 
the progress is continuous from elements to mineral 
kingdom, from mineral to vegetable, from vegeta- 
ble to animal kingdom." f 

♦Mind, Health and Religion, by Robert MacDonald, 
t Evolution of Human Soul, p. 147. 



CHAPTER VIII 

We lean on God too much — the result of old 
teachings and our former weakness — whereas it is 
time for us to realize that we ourselves are gods 
with stupendous powers and capabilities at our com- 
mand. You are man limitless. Expand your 
thoughts, exercise your intelligence and you will 
develop these hitherto unknown powers. What you 
believe, you are. If you are an emanation of God, 
made in his image, both spirits, therefore com- 
munion with God is possible; is what would natur- 
ally take place. 

Call it Energy, Force, Spirit, God — what we 
will, we must admit that there is something from 
which we all emanate. '^ The fact that you are 
here is all the evidence you need to prove this 
to yourself. We know it is an intelligence be- 
cause I am intelligence and could only come from 
another and greater intelligence. Life cannot come 
from a dead thing; intelligence cannot emanate 
from a dead thing." Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, 
and most of the philosophers taught monism, and 
the scientists are fast dropping their division into 

129 



130 Man— God's Masterpiece 

elements and are teaching it, either from a scientific 
or a spiritual basis.* 

One of its fundamentals is to '' know thyself/' f 
Many of the old philosophers spoke of the soul as 
a living organism conceding to the mineral world 
the notion of a living force, claiming that every- 
thing was but a material manifestation of spirit; 
that spirit begat force and force matter and thus 
God showed Himself as a creative energy. And to 
this line of thought are coming the scientists of to- 
day.J 

The new interpretation is only new in its appli- 
cation of certain Idealistic, Monistic, Pantheistic 
principles to everyday life and use. It is a practi- 

* Review of Reviews, April, 1909, quotes Alfred R. Wal- 
lace : " Neither Darwinian nor any other theory in science 
or philosophy can give more than a secondary explanation 
of phenomena. Some deeper power or cause has to be 

postulated So that even the extreme monists, such 

as Herschel, are driven to the supposition that every ulti- 
mate cell is a conscious, intelligent individual that knows 

where to go and what to do ; goes there and does it 

beyond and above all terrestial agencies, there is some 
great source of energy and guidance which in unknown 
ways pervades every form of organized life and of which 
we ourselves are the ultimate and preordained outcome. 

t Socrates old motto. 

}Hibbert Journal, Jan., 1905 — Murtle Lecture, by Mc- 
Kendrick; Evidence of things not seen by J. A. Fleming; 
Soul of Man by Dr. Carnes; Introductions to Comparative 
Psychology by Prof. Lloyd Morgan; Writings of Sir Oliver 
XiOdge, etc. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 131 

cal interpretation and application of old ideas. A 
selecting and joining together of the highest ideas 
in religion and philosophy, one that will stand a 
scientific test. Its promises are to be fulfilled on this 
earth as well as hereafter. 

Hegel, Schopenhauer and Spinoza taught ad- 
vanced Idealism — that God was in all and all in 
God. Christ said : '' For it is not ye that speak 
but the spirit of your Father which speaketh in 
you.'' * '' At that day ye shall know that I am in 
my Father and ye in me, and I in you." f Em- 
erson taught that the human soul is the inlet and 
the outlet of all there is in God. Lord Kelvin 
(deceased) probably the greatest scientist since 
Newton's time, says : " Modern Biologists are 
coming round more and more to the belief that 
there is a hidden irresolvable vital principle. We 
are absolutely forced by science to admit and to 
believe with absolute confidence in a directive power, 
in an influence distinguishable from physical, dynam- 
ical, electrical forces. There is no middle ground, 
no resting-place between the absolute scientific be- 
lief in creative power on the one hand, and accept- 
ance of the theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms 
on the other. There is a mysterious influence 
abroad in the world and science is fully conscious of 
this force, although it cannot adequately explain 
it" 

* Matt. 10 : 20. t John 14 : 20, 



132 Man — God's Masterpiece 

That mind is the cause, and nature but the effect^, 
that the soul does not age with the body, and that, 
as part of the universal mind, we are inheritors of 
all its knowledge.* 

The new interpretation claims that man is part 
of God,t not a mere reflection, but God made mani- 
fest in the flesh. Diogenes claimed that life is not 
only force but intelligence and that this intelligence 
was first of all. Anaxagoras proclaimed the ex- 
istence of the Infinite Intelligence (the one) who 
w^as architect of the Infinite Matter (many). Zeno 
of the Elea claimed that there was " but one thing 
really existing, all the others being only modifica- 
tions or appearances of that one." Socrates held 
man to be as it were a god and immortal. He turned 
the tide of skepticism. He had the philosophers 
look inward. Plato, who was a Socratist, applied it 
more universally. Heraclitus considered all bodies 
as transformations of one and the same element. 
Pythagoras taught that the individual soul was a 
part of the world soul. 

Stoicism was concrete, spiritualism pure and 
simple. The universe was a living being of which 
God was the soul. Cicero, Brutus, Atlarcus, 
Aurelius and many others found great encourage- 

♦ Transcendentalism in New England, Frothingham, p. 
198. 

tThe Hebrew psalmist sang of man: "Thou hast made 
him little lower than God." 



Man — God's Masterpiece 133 

ment and consolation in this. Plutarch, Apuleius, 
Seudas, Eusebius and the Christian Gnostics held 
with the Stoics and believed in a supreme and 
unique principle embodying itself in a number of 
secondary divinities.* Man being the fullest ex- 
pression of earthly life, and as life and God are 
interchangeable terms, therefore, man is the high- 
est expression of God known to us,t and being 
such we can best study God through man from effect 
to cause. And man is our chief warrant for be- 
lieving in a God.t 

" Many of the orthodox fathers preached rein- 
carnation. It was an essential part of the church 
philosophy for many centuries," until the w^estern 
influence predominated and stamped it heresy. § 
Beecher, Philip Brooks and others taught it. Jesus 
repeatedly confirmed the popular impression that 

* History of Philosophy, Weber. "The spiritual per- 
sonality in man can have had its source in nothing less 
than a spiritual personality greater than he, infinite in 
power, wisdom, goodness, holiness and love." Getting To- 
gether, p. 38; hence the intuitive craving for a God and 
immortality. 

t Getting Together, p. 80, Whiton. 

t New Thought became practicable only when the theory 
of evolution was modified and spiritualized by the suc- 
cessors of Darwin. Prof. Cope says : " The entire process 
of ascending evolution seems to be dependent on the pres- 
ence of mind, that is, consciousness in its successive stages 
from the simple to the complex." 

§ Evolution of Human Soul, p. 104. 



134 Man — God's Masterpiece 

John the Baptist was a reincarnation of Elijah. All 
nature is in a state of evolution ever improving and 
becoming more spiritual, and life is constantly grow- 
ing better and more enjoyable and will ever con- 
tinue to. 

Emerson says : ^^ The fossil strata show that na- 
ture began with rudimentary forms and rose to 
more complex as fast as the earth was fit for their 
dwelling-place/' and that the lower perish as the 
higher appear. Dr. T. Ladd says : " The secrets of 
human life, its origin and evolution, must be studied 
in man himself and will not be determined by the 
study of chemistry or physics.'' True it is that 
'' the proper study of mankind is man." 

The seat of immortality could not be in the body 
or it would be perishable. Matter is a lower de- 
velopment of spirit acted upon by the higher spirit- 
ual forces. It is the outward expression of a spirit- 
ual ideal. The soul unfolds into * consciousness of 
self and the body is a creation of it. Being a part 
of God (or good, its definition) man must be in- 

* Bishop Berkeley of the Church of England taught that 
everything was but a phase of mind, which was the only 
substance. Biographical History of Philosophy, p. 568. 
Prof. Du Bois says : " We admit as a physical fact that 
at least within certain undefined limitations in our or- 
ganism, matter obeys will and brain particles move at the 
impulse of volition." The Bible says: "The word was 
made flesh.'* Emanuel Kant said : ** The universe around 
man is only a projection of his own inner consciousness." 
Prof, Herrick of Denxson University, claimed that focused 



Man — God's Masterpiece 135 

herently good and all that is bad in him is merely 
the friction arising from a faulty expression which 
will in time pass away as he learns to comply with 
the law, which is the harmonious action of a part 
with the whole.* Out of this unity springs harmony 
and the translation of harmony is Heaven. 

" Pythagoras gave to the world for the first time a 
conception of a universal cosmic harmony, of which 
we are an integral part, and which depends for its 
beauty and order on the great Central Life and 
mysteries.'' f 

In our daily life here, on the testimony of our 
senses, for our intelligence is not sufficiently great 
yet to analyze their testimony, as we must, in order 
to discern the spirit, we recognize a personal self 
only, which is naturally a very material one, and 
this personal self, in our ignorance at first, knowing 
naught as we have seen of the spirit, we serve at the 
expense of the higher self, the God within, so dis- 

in the mind of man are the dynamic forces of the universe ; 
that above and beyond our most daring calculations is the 
potency of thought. " From body to body your spirit speeds 
on. It seeks a new form when the old form is gone, and the 
form that it finds is the fabric you wrought, on the loom of 
the mind with the shuttle of thought." Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 
Prof. Hyslop of Columbia says that the traditional gulf 
between matter and spirit no longer exists, that matter is 
not dead, but alive with spirit. Principal Fairbankes says : 
*' Matter is spirit." 

* Often the criminal is but a reversion of the type. 

tMind, Vol. II. 



136 Man — God's Masterpiece 

turbed conditions arise, known to us as pain, sin, 
sickness, etc., all the result of friction between the 
two, and these continue until they become unen- 
durable, when our intelligence is aroused to seek 
a remedy, which is always to subordinate the per- 
sonal self, man's wrong ideal, to the higher self, the 
soul, and to act under its guidance. 

We must let go of the thought of self, the part 
must act in unison with God, the whole. This con- 
dition of friction becomes greater when we reach 
that state of consciousness where we choose for our- 
selves, for in our ignorance we have to try many 
paths, before we choose the right one, and before 
we acquire sufficient intelligence to recognize the 
right from the wrong, and to form a conception of 
God's laws, their workings, and the part he plays in 
the divine economy. 

So sin, suffering, etc., are the means of guiding us 
to this great discovery as well as a stimulant to our 
intelligence. The path is a thorny one and no one 
desires to linger by the way, and pay the penalties, 
but there are none of us so perfect or born with such 
great intelligence, but what we have at times needed 
these lessons that they give, to direct us right. 
Naturally, then when we accept the higher self and 
act under its guidance, all friction ceases, we attain 
a condition of infinite peace and with it all sin and 
suffering no longer of use, give way to a condition 
of infinite happiness, which constitutes heaven and 



Man — God's Masterpiece 137 

the reverse naturally is hell — conditions both. Man, 
being so imperfect, is entitled to no yard stick which 
will allow him to measure the merits or demerits of 
his fellow-man. The perfect God alone can do this. 

Being God's, all things are ours (by reason of our 
divine origin) when we have the intelligence to use 
them, here on earth as well as hereafter. In nature 
every necessity or want meets with corresponding 
satisfaction.* It might work out great harm if we 
in our ignorance could, like a child with an edged 
tool, use them permaturely. 

Finally all nature will be at our command. Christ 
says : " It is your Father's good pleasure to give you 
the kingdom." '' Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither hath entered into the heart of man to con- 
ceive, the things which God hath prepared for them 
that love him," and as our powers coming from Him 
are unlimited, so will be our happiness. '' All things 
are yours," but you must understand your relation- 
ship to them before you can possess them. Poverty, 
sin and suffering will then cease to be f when the 
necessity for their existence passes away. This new 
conception rejects dualism as separating man from 
God and nature. | It teaches him to look within for 
all blessings. 

* Chnd and Child Nature, p. 40, Buelow. 

t " All power is given unto me," said Jesus, and later he 
Baid, " Greater things than these shall ye do." 

% " Philosophy gradually abandoned dualism." History 
of Philosophy, p. 404, Weber. 



138 Man — God's Masterpiece 

The Holy of Holies lies within. It is the soul 
where God stands revealed and where we are face 
to face with him. It is the closet that Christ tells 
us to seek and pray in. It is here that '' the pure in 
heart shall see God.^' The Hindoo sage Mame said: 
'' He who in his own soul perceives the supreme 
soul in all beings and acquires equanimity toward 
them all attains the highest bliss." It is the univer- 
sal church. Here also must you look for all law and 
become thereby a law unto yourself. The body is 
the temple of the soul merely and never must be con- 
sidered the ego. '' It is the spirit that quickeneth, 
the flesh profiteth nothing.'' 

No longer a terrifying God dwelling on high and a 
worse devil under the earth keeping man ever in a 
state of fear, which condition the priest often played 
upon and increased to his own and the church's ad- 
vantage. But an ever-present God abiding in man 
himself, the loving Father. '' He that loveth not, 
knoweth not God, for God is love." " God is love 
and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and 
God in Him." * " God is in all, the eternal source of 
all existence, and he becomes conscious of himself in 
man." f '' No man hath seen God at any time, if we 
love one another, God dwelleth in us and His love is 
perfected in us." J '' That they all may be one, as 

*John 4:8-16. 

t Schelling. 

$ First Epistle of St. John. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 139 

Thou Father art in me and I in Thee, that they also 
may be one in us/' * '* Neither shall they say: Lo 
here or lo there, for behold the Kingdom of God is 
within you. And they shall say to you, see here or 
see there, go not after them or follow them/' t 

The Father is ever anxious to answer man's call 
for the greater is naturally desirous to agree with its 
parts and so produce harmony or heaven. The 
Greeks and Romans reasoned that there must be a 
separate cause for every occurrence or series of oc- 
currences. These causes were ultimately deified by 
their religious sense and became numerous gods. 
With the development of a superior reasoning power, 
we now know that there can be but one first cause, 
of which all things are effects. This cause must 
exist in a state of perfection, otherwise it would not 
be a first cause. 

'' We have learned from experience that any- 
thing in an imperfect state undergoes a change; 
to admit of a cause undergoing a change would 
be to admit of another underlying cause, which 
would produce such a change. Since the first 
cause of all things must exist in a perfect state the 
question arises, from whence comes all the misery 
and distress of our earthly existence ? The answer is 
plain. We are not in harmony with this cause. On 
the contrary we exist in a world of our own, made 
up largely of incorrect and inharmonious ideas. 
* John 17 : 21, t I^uke 17 ; 21-23, 



I40 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Such a world cannot be real for it is continually 
changing without better understanding and there is 
no absolute reality but the state of perfection in 
which the first cause itself exists." * 

Many of us no longer hold to the old theory of a 
perfect man, placed in a perfect world and deliber- 
ately choosing to sin : " God Omnipresent knew 
of the serpent's presence in Eden and of the tempta- 
tion; in fact He created him. Omnipotent, He could 
have destroyed him, yet He let this innocent couple, 
knowing no guile, be tempted, knowing, as He was 
omniscient, that they would fall, and then punished 
them for it." After a war in Heaven, Satan de- 
feated, was thrown out, and unfortunately for us 
fell onto our pigmy earth among the myriads of ex- 
isting worlds. He was thereafter to wax so strong 
in his conflict with God, his Creator, thru the fall of 
one man — Adam (Eve being only a rib, her sinning 
was inconsequential, I presume) and that God should 
find it necessary to send down his only beloved 
son to Earth, one of the smallest of millions of 
planets, as a ransom for the captive race, to be ac- 
cepted by Satan, and thru him to suffer and perish 
on the cross, to counteract this influence that God 
had permitted, and for the sake of a vast majority 
who had never even heard of Him while he was on 
earth, t and the devil they claimed got fooled on the 

* Progress Magazine, Nov., 1910. 

,t Present Day Theology, p. 150, Gladden. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 141 

transaction for he lost his hold on the race by ac- 
cepting Jesus as the sacrifice. What would any one 
think of a judge who punished an innocent man 
who offered to suffer for a guilty one — guilt is not 
transferable. They even claimed, these old theolo- 
gians, that as man's substitute, Christ became and 
knew himself to be a thief, an adulterer, and a 
murderer.* A wonderful plan of salvation this! 

And what kind of a man was Adam anyhow, 
when he let a woman persuade him to do wrong, and 
then quickly shifted the blame to her shoulders. The 
facts are, God made a pretty poor man as his first at- 
tempt — were the myth true. He a just God, pun- 
ished the innocent (Jesus) that the guilty might 
escape. Yet, Jesus, the victim of it all, never speaks 
of this fall from grace, or the doctrines of atone- 
ment or of eternal punishment, evolved out of the 
flimsy evidence of unknown writers, who ascribed to 
this cause the existence amongst us of disease, death 
and hell; the fit punishment for a race, who from 
this moment on became hopelessly depraved and lost. 
And a just, all-powerful God never interfered to 
stop it.f It is on a par with the story of the Sun and 
Moon which stood still for a whole day at the com- 
mand of Joshua. Renan in his Life of Christ, called 
them " incredible Bible stories." 

The mythical story of Jesus whom they claim 

* Idem, p. 157. 

t Evolution of Religion, pp. 133-134. 



142 Man — God's Masterpiece 

is God being taken to a high mountain and being 
there tempted by his servant Satan, his creation, 
and tempted by the offer of possesions of which 
he was the Creator and set very Httle value on * 
seems too simple for human credence. The Bible 
Revision Committee in making up the revised ver- 
sion dropped the story of the man cured at the 
pool of Bethesda and have intimated that the 
beautiful story of the woman taken in adultery is 
an interpolation, t To take sides with Satan, so 
making of God's best handiwork an utter failure, it is 
a denial of the omniscience and omnipotence of God 
who knew from the beginning the destiny of man. 
Hereafter man's worship must concentrate in one 
God and not be divided between his duties to the 
Lord and his fear of the devil. How much more 
beautiful the idea of the eternal evolution of man 
from the electron, to a membership in the Angelic 
Host. 

* Idem, p. 172. 

t Idem, pp. 176-177, Why not reject others also? 



CHAPTER IX 

The further we go back in history, the cruder 
we find man to have been, and this holds good as we 
study him in prehistoric times ; thru his language and 
his mythology and the remains he has left behind, 
the only way he left of expressing his trend of 
thought to the student. Visible objects with which 
he came in contact we should expect to find in his 
language, etc., but abstract ideas, creations of the 
mind, showed more truly the extent or lack of his 
civilization.* 

Quoting from Childhood of Religions,! our 
•myths, legends and fairytales had mostly a com- 
mon Aryan origin before the parting of the 
ways; nearly every religion speaks of happy times 
originally and then evil creeping in. The Parsee 
looks back to the happy rule of King Yima, the 
Buddhist to when there was no sin, no famine in 
the land, but the tasting of a delicious scum that 
formed the crust of the earth brought sin and 
suffering. The Tibitians and Mongolians believed 
early men were Gods until they tasted of a certain 

* Outlines of Primitive Belief, p. 10, Keary. 
tClodd, pp. 44, 96-98. 

143 



144 Man — God's Masterpiece 

sweet herb, when their wings dropped ofif, their 
beauty faded, and life thereafter was filled with 
bitterness. The Greeks also claimed a woman, Pan- 
dora, brought pain and bitterness to a happy world. 
The Persians believed man was tempted and fell 
through the machinations of a serpent, and in many 
lands the serpent was the symbol of evil.* The 
Bible teaches that man was made from the dust 
of the earth, the Egyptian that he came from the 
slime of the Nile, and the Chinese and our Indians 
that he came from clay, the Peruvians from ani- 
mated earth. 

All the leading nations have told of a terrible 
flood which destroyed mankind, all except a chosen 
few. The Chaldean account of the flood is al- 
most identical with the Jewish, but then both were 
members of the same race. As everything is good 
or God, the Orthodox Devil, that bogey of a by- 
gone time must necessarily be nonexistent. The 
serpent with its disagreeable presence and subtle 
elusive and underhand methods was well-chosen to 
represent sin for both are mysteries. 

The new interpretation teaches us that salvation 
and happiness awaits us here on earth : it comes from 
within and is not merely a promise to be fulfilled 
hereafter — perhaps. Prof. E. C. Hayes f says : 
" The new Gospel and science of life will enable us 

* Ibid, p. 52, 72. 

tOf the University of Illinois. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 145 

to see behind the symbol and give new meanings to 
old ideals." * 

Love and service fulfills all ideals and therefore 
begets happiness. Love produces harmony and 
therefore spells happiness and service is its practical 
application to daily life. The inner and spiritual 
life can be lived here as well as in the life to 
come. 

Everything that appertains to your happiness, 
your health and your development exists within 
yourself and you are the only one that can develop 
it. Once entertain this thought of the indwelling 
God t his Fatherhood, and the brotherhood of man, 
and our oneness with all follows as a natural se- 
quence. Also one's duties to his brother and to his 

* Prof. James says : " In British and American Univer- 
sities dualistie theism is being replaced by a monistic pan- 
theism, more or less disguised. I have an impression that 
ever since T. H. Green's time absolute idealism has been 
decidedly in the ascendant at Oxford. It is in the ascendant 

at my own University of Harvard The only opinion 

quite worthy of arresting your attention will fall within the 
general scope of what may be roughly called the Pantheistic 
field of vision, the vision of God as the indwelling divine 
rather than the external creator, and of human life as part 
and parcel of that deep reality." M. W. Calkins, Professor 
of Philosophy and Psychology at Wellesly, says : " Among 
trained philosophers, as among serious thinkers, material- 
ism has no foothold and idealism has made good its claims." 
Harold Bolce. 

t Which is the soul of man. 



146 Man — God's Masterpiece 

God,* and this with a belief in a future world of 
rewards and punishments is all there is in religion, 
and all that Christ ever taught. 

The Creeds and Dogmas f were man made, the 
outgrowth of the times and the result of the ignor- 
ance and needs of those days and these must pass 
away. The Kingdom of Heaven is within and not 
in some far-off J land — a mental condition of our 
own creating, not a fixed place. And remember that 
the hells we create are apt to be costly, whereas 
heaven is far more satisfactory and generally costs 
but little, why therefore cultivate a hellish condition 
when heaven can be purchased at less expense ? 

On June 2nd, 191 1, at Hot Springs, Arkansas, 
the International Bible Students' Association met 
and proclaimed Hell and Hell-fire to be a myth and 

* Your oneness with your f eHow-men makes you in a 
measure responsible for the sins of the world of which 
you are a part; the reverse is also true, the whole is in a 
measure responsible for each part, hence the necessity for 
agreement and equal progression to make a perfect whole 
or a perfect part. 

t As to the doctrine of the Trinity, ** The Greeks had 
their triad gods, Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, the Hindu, 
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, the Goths, Odin, Vile and Ve. 
The Persians, Syrians, Egyptians and others had their 
triad gods." Evolution of the Human Soul, pp. 156-157. 

$Prof. M. W. Calkins, of Wellesly, teaches "that the 
view of God which conceives him as external to the hu- 
man self is a view which dominates the lowest forms of 
religion." Harold Bolce. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 147 

passed resolutions asking ministers to discard these 
words and to cease teaching their literal interpreta- 
tion and asking that the words Sheol and Hades be 
interpreted to mean tomb or grave.* 

It is attained by those who hold communion with 
God (or as they say in the Bible those who talk 
with God), a condition therefore not a place. 
This agrees with St. Paul when he says : '' Know ye 
not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost 
which is in you, which ye have of God? '' and there- 
fore should be kept undefiled. Harold Bolce f says : 
" The teachings of Emerson that we are gods, play- 
ing the part of fools is taken up by the college men 
who insist that just as we have not yet harnessed 
the mighty power of the tides, so the forces of the 
spirit come and go with man standing idly by. The 
late Prof. Herrick of Denison University, taught 
that torrents of energy are continually passing 
through our brains without awakening any response 
— unutilized.! 

Science having found a way through Psychology 
to God, the opportunities for the race through in- 
voking in the human consciousness the brooding 

♦ " I sent my Soul through the Invisible, some letter of 
that After-life to spell : And by and by my Soul return'd 
to me and answered : " I myself am Heaven and Hell." 
Omar Khayyam. 

t Cosmopolitan, July, 1909. 

t Prof. Herrick shows that the energy operating in the 
brain if converted into gross forms of work, would lift 



148 Man — God's Masterpiece 

spirit that fills all space are absolutely infinite. 
Science therefore, is demonstrating along new 
lines or at least is claiming to demonstrate that 

man is God made manifest Not merely 

in religious rhetoric but in reality, the schoolmen 
say, is man the avator of God that by in- 
voking the powers. . . . the divine forces. . . resi- 
dent in the human, all that humanity desires may 
be accomplished. The colleges in teaching this faith 
take ground with those who believe that in the 
emancipation and fruition of modern thought 
greater works than Christ did will be performed. 

A good healthy body must needs have its appe- 
tites, it would be abnormal if it were not so. Under 
proper control we pronounce it good otherwise 
evil. It is the user that makes it good or bad. - 

In different stages of life different conditions 
apply. At first we had to be entirely selfish in order 
to live, but as we advanced we had to modify our 
selfish desires and the knowledge only came to us 
through bitter experiences. Those whom we mis- 
treated did the same to us and fear of retaliation 
therefore often held a check over us. Now with 



many tons, literally miles high, daily, for we deal here, said 
the scientist, with what the physicist calls intra-molecular 
types of forces as well as molecular and molar forces. . . 
he can summon it (they say) to work his will; the potency 
and future operation of this psychic force no man can 
compute. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 149 

our increased knowledge, we are realizing our one- 
ness with God and Man, and love instead of fear is 
assuming control, and, while still working out the 
problem of self-advancement, it will hereafter be 
through advancing the whole, of which we are a 
part. 

Love releases a man from his petty, selfish indi- 
viduality and makes him a partaker of universal 
life, he becomes in harmony with the whole and so 
fulfills the law. It combats the inherited force of 
animal appetites with a loving recognition of the 
rights of others. Materialism held that man was an 
expression of matter "^ whereas the new interpreta- 
tion claims that matter is a manifestation of spirit. 
'^ Know ye not that your body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost which is in you?"t Everything ex- 
isting being the result of thought, Professor Drum- 

* " The old Derwinian theory was that * all potency is 
contained in matter'; that matter contained some inherent 
power to evolve itself. No general or unitary creative will 
was thought necessary and although the higher orders had 
an attribute called " Mind " or " Soul," it w^as counted 
simply as a property of matter and must perish with 
matter. But through the later researches of Spencer, 
Wallace, and more notably Henry Drummond, Professor 
LeConte, the Duke of Argyle and John Fiske, with other 
recent thinkers, it has been largely winnow^ed of its cruder 
and more unwelcome aspects and socialized, moralized and 
spiritualized." Mind, Vol. 11. 

1 1 Cor. 6 : 19. 



150 Man — God's Masterpiece 

mond says : " The world is only a thing that is. 
It is not. It is a thing that teaches, yet not even a 
thing — a show that shows, a teaching shadow.'' 
'' Matter is spiritual in essence or origin." * The 
Spirit in this life is ever seeking embodiment or 
manifestation.! 

Our own make-up is essentially spiritual. Hegel 
says: ''Man is spirit, conscious of its own ex- 
istence." We are souls utilizing a body % but 
we function upon material, mental, and spiritual 
planes. '' The soul of man is a self-existent entity 
and an important, indispensable part of the uni- 
versal spirit and the evolution of the human soul 
is just as real as the evolution of the body.§ Be- 
ing a part of the universal mind, though ever 
so small, we are in communication with the uni- 
versal mind, hence all knowledge and power comes 
from within. 

The brain is our organ of perception and trans- 
mission, it being the law that the soul can mani- 
fest on the physical plane only through the physi- 

* Professor Adamson. 

t " You must lose yourself to find yourself " means you^ 
must subdue the carnal side of your nature and put the 
spirit in control. 

t Because we have separate bodies we fool ourselves and 
fail to realize that the spirit, the ego, is part of one great 
whole, inseparably so and therefore dependent on it. 

§ Evolution of the Human Soul, p. 10, Andersen. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 151 

cal body. Instinct in animals and chemical affinity 
in minerals are but exhibitions of the action of 
mind. Herbert Spencer says : '' I see in mental 
and physical phenomena only different forms of an 
inscrutable power of which matter and force are 
symbolic representations.'' Hudson says: "No 
scientist will deny within us the existence of a cen- 
tral intelligence which controls bodily functions 
and through the sympathetic nervous system acu- 
tates the involuntary muscles and keeps the bodily 
machinery in motion. Nor will the most prominent 
materialist deny that this central intelligence is the 
controlling energy which regulates the action of 
each of the myriad cellular entities of which the 
body is composed. 

The body is what the spirit has made it by ages 
of action upon it, represented by mental stages, 
and is therefore best suited for the spirit in each 
stage of its existence."^ The Bible, when it states 
that man was created in the likeness of God refers 
to the spirit and not to the physical body, which 
latter is only useful to the spirit in this life. It 
maintains that as a man thinketh, he is. It also 

* " The Yogis claim there are three manifestations of the 
absolute, mind, the highest, then Force or Energy and 
thirdly matter, the grossest of all, and the three often 
shade into each other. The soul clothes itself with matter, 
acts through energy and thinks through mind substance. 
Advanced Course Yogi Philosophy, VoL 2, pp. 313, 14, 



152 Man — God's Masterpiece 

says that God made man a living soul. Very defi- 
nite this — not that he has a soul merely, as we have 
been taught for ages, but that he is a soul and not 
a body. We must not therefore become so deeply 
absorbed in material things as to lose sight of the 
spiritual; wc must not sacrifice things spiritual to 
the gold standard.* 

St. Paul says : '' The things which are seen are 
temporal but the things which are not seen are 
eternal.'' " That there is a desire for such teach- 
ings," said Harold Bolce, " we will verify by quot- 
ing from Professor R. Eucken." f He says : '* I 
found at Harvard a tremendous thirst for spiritual 
things. . . I believe in America there is a great 
longing for a new idealism. . . . They have a tre- 
mendous thirst for the new idealism." 



(( 



The great eternal infinite, the great unbounded 

whole, 
Thy body is the universe — thy spirit is the soul. 
If thou didst fill immensity; if thou art all in 

all, 
If thou wert here before I was, I am not here at 

all. 

* " The end of life to be like unto God and the soul 
following God will be like unto Him. He being the be- 
ginning, middle, and end of all things." Socrates. 

t Professor of Philosophy at Jena, Nobel prize winner, 
and exchange Professor at Harvard. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 153 

How could I live outside of thee dost thou fill light 
and air? 

There surely is no place for me, outside of every- 
where, 

If thou art God and thou didst fill immensity of 
space, 

Then I am God, think as you will, or else I have no 
place, 

And if I have no place at all or if I am not here. 

Banished I surely cannot be, for then Td be some- 
where. 

Then I must be a part of God, no matter if I'm 
small. 

And if Tm not a part of him, there's no such God at 
all." 

You have fought your way from a single cell to 
a human being with his wonderful intelligence — a 
most stupendous but successful struggle. It should 
inspire you with courage to continue the fight, hav- 
ing, as you do, all the powers of the Godhead at 
your disposal and therefore the assurance that 
nothing can come to you that you cannot bear. It 
is a cheering thought, too, that most of the drud- 
gery is done with and the struggle bids fair soon 
to be a surpassingly pleasing performance. The 
results already attained predicate the irresistible 
powers within, qualified to accomplish anything 



154 Man — God's Masterpiece 

and * possessing unlimited powers f so far you have 
only learned to utilize an infinitesimal part of them. 
Remove your mental limitations, the results in part 
of past experiences; realize your vast powers, and in 
time there will be nothing that you cannot do,t for 
God is the source of power you draw from and he 
has promised you dominion over the earth and all 
its resources. The higher dictates to the lower and 
the latter obeys. Once understand the law and you 
can command the material world around you, for 
it is a lower form and one which you passed through 
in previous evolutions, and probably remember all 

* " From this region of mystery and darkness which 
surrounds us, rays may be darting which now require but 
the development of proper intellectual organs to trans- 
mute them into knowledge as far surpassing ours, as ours 
surpasses that of the wallowing reptiles, which once held 
possession of this planet." Professor Tyndall in Fragments 
of Science, Professor Charles Reichert says : '* One Hun- 
dred Thousand years from now our science of to-day will be 
as inferior to the science of that day as the knowledge of 
the chimpanzee is inferior to that of a doctor of science. 
The discoveries in that line will far exceed the most dar- 
ing anticipations. 

t It is an undoubted fact that human beings in a state 
of ecstacy have endured the severest pains without feeling 
any suffering, as witness Cranmer at the stake, the mor- 
tally wounded soldier fighting on, etc. Here the mind con- 
trols and furnishes a wonderful exhibition of its powers. 

t " If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye 
shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you," 
John 15 : 7. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 155 

about in your subconscious mind, and whose vibra- 
tions some day you will be able to control through 
your spirit, for everything in nature is a manifesta- 
tion of spirit and obeys it implicitly. 

Do not deny your Father's powers by saying you 
cannot, for, as Napoleon truly said : " There is no 
such word." Also realize that when you act sepa- 
rately from the whole, whether through ignorance or 
by intent, you lose your identity, and then you have 
the divine power acting in opposition to you and 
success and health is therefore impossible. Anger 
especially puts you out of touch with the Infinite 
and fear often paralyses all effort. Emerson says: 
'* There is no defeat except from within. There is 
really no insurmountable barrier save your own 
inherent weakness of purpose." '' No one thing 
is foreign or unrelated to another." * 

Man's tremendous mental development through 
the ages, the wonderful ideas he is entertaining, 
with their resultant discoveries, not only indicate 
a vast mental growth in the future far beyond our 
conception at present, but bear silent testimony to 
the vastness of the intelligence from w^hich we 
originated, as does all evolution. The word '' man " 
comes from the Zend word '' Manthra," meaning 
a being who thinks and speaks, and it is to these 
powers man owes his present superiority. By 
means of his thinking to better advantage than the 
♦Marcus Aurelius. 



156 Man — G6d's Masterpiece 

animal, he becomes a conscious creator and takes 
advantage of the law to fulfil his destiny." 

He should always remember that thought, plea- 
sant or vicious ever seeks outward manifestation, 
and be careful accordingly. The imagination sup- 
plies the mental picture or mould which may later 
materialize into action or some material thing, de- 
pending always upon the strength of his desire, 
whether it is sufficient or not to beget action. The 
desire to possess also implies the power to do so. 

It is the spiritual laws that are causative and that 
bind all matter together, and the brain interprets 
them, and through the body comes their expression 
on the physical plane of consciousness. Man living 
on this plane has magnified the importance of the 
physical and the tyrant body with its limitless appe- 
tites has made a slave of him. What fools we are 
to let the body, the shadow, ursurp the rule of the 
spirit, the reality ! 

It was not until man's brain became sufficiently 
developed to understand the importance of the 
spirit that he realized his true identity, and, as he 
lets the spirit rule, the results that will follow will 
surpass his wildest dreams. It is recognizing the 
spirit and weaving it into his work that makes the 
great artist, musician, or doctor. What man has 
already done * — we see in the wireless, the tele- 

* What a wonderful change from the spindle and distaff 
to the power loom, from copper to steel, from transporta- 



Man — God's Masterpiece 157 

phone and the aeroplane, etc., but the following 
may not be so well-known. 

'' Edison invented the microphone, whereby the 
footsteps of a housefly sound like the sound of a 
galloping horse, or a mosquito's hum like the blare 
of a brass instrument. Another is a tiny apparatus 
which bores a hole in wood, by the power imparted 
by the vibration of the human voice, spoken into a 
funnel. Another instrument registers the heat of a 
candle a mile off or of stars billions of miles away. 
Another registers the presence of a single drop of 
water in a room." Marconi has just announced that 
he is perfecting an instrument whereby he can see 
through solid walls and Edison proclaims the dis- 
covery of another that will record the conversation 
carried on over a telephone, etc. 

All true proprietorship's is spiritual not physi- 
cal. The man who buys a costly picture and does 
not appreciate its fine points is simply the custo- 
dian ; the owner is he who can appreciate its beauties 
and possess it in his mind, where all true possessions 
lie.* Forget the personal, it only leads to self-seek- 
ing and unhappiness by leading you away from good 

tion by humans to the railroad, from parchment to printed 
books, from the canoe to the ocean liner, etc., betokening 
and proving the Godhead in man, and it has all been ac- 
complished since science has realized that the greatest 
forces of the world are unseen. 

* " Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened," 
applies not to earthly but to spiritual possessions. 



158 Man — God's Masterpiece 

(God). Abandon self -consciousness, substitute God 
consciousness. 

Remember that all that is good comes from within, 
where the Godhead is. Even beauty will in time 
cease to be skin deep and be recognized only when 
it is the reflection of the indwelling God, If we 
would enjoy our own, let us utilize our environment 
and not be governed by it. 

When man ceases to hunger for the material 
gratification of the senses and emancipates himself 
from the bondage of matter, working for the com- 
mon good, then will Heaven (harmony) prevail 
on earth. " Except ye become as little children, 
ye cannot enter the kindgom of Heaven,'' means 
that you must give yourself up entirely and implic- 
itly to the dictation of the spirit within, then no 
longer will there be the conflict between the flesh man 
and the soul man. " The whole cosmos is friendly 
to man as a soul, all apparent unfriendliness being 
located in the preverted vision of the flesh man 
asserting himself.'' 

As the child reposes unbounded love and confi- 
dence in his parents so must we feel ultimately 
toward all mankind and they toward us. In the 
meantime we can enjoy it now to a greater or 
less degree according to the stage of our progres- 
sion. By reason of his evolution man can claim 
kinship between himself and everything existing, 
for the eternal energy has ever been busy moulding 



Man — God's Masterpiece 159 

matter into shapes and forms best suited to the ex- 
pression of the spirit back of it. In the conflicts of 
daily Hfe, remember that truth existed forever, and 
has back of it the power of good or God, of which 
it is a part, and that error or sin is bound to fail in 
the end for it is in opposition to God's laws. 

Many are hardened by their sufferings and daily 
trials and especially by their ofttimes desperate ef- 
forts to obtain money sufficient to maintain their 
social position, a condition which in time we will 
outgrow but which in the meantime is a very seri- 
ous problem. Remember, however, that in all re- 
fining processes (as when blood is introduced to 
clarify sugar) there are stages w^hen the article under 
treatment seems to be damaged beyond repair and 
the process appears to be a failure. Yet the operator 
knows it is not, that this stage will pass away and the 
article will come out purified and attractive. God 
burns the dross to refine the gold. Our troubles are 
really links that bind the soul of man to his God. 

If we could only understand that it is all part 
of our schooling, that our most useful lessons are 
those that are the most painful, costing us the 
most effort, and that this mental viewpoint will en- 
able us to bear up under them and reap the invaluable 
results to be gathered from them. It is simply as- 
tonishing how we magnify and increase these con- 
ditions by dwelling upon them and by allowing our 
fears to dominate us at this time. So often we con- 



i6o Man — God's Masterpiece 

jure up happenings which in nine cases out of ten 
never come to pass. Like the Irishman dying, called 
his son to his bedside and said : '' Pat, I have had 
lots of trouble most of v^hich never came to pass." 
God in his infinite wisdom and absorbing love for us 
is still guiding us at these times and he cannot fail 
us and be our God. How often in our lifetime 
has the air seemed absolutely black to us with 
sorrow, our lives an apparent failure, and yet cleared 
up afterwards ? We have survived past sorrows and 
must present ones. 

When the body becomes the servant of the spirit, 
harmony (the result of right adjustment) prevails, 
and it is reflected in a better, healthier body, since 
all disease is the result of friction arising from 
the faulty expression of the spirit through the body. 
The soul of the worst criminal, being of God, is pure 
and undefiled : his conduct is only the result of tem- 
porary inharmonious action. Therefore, realize that 
the true man is a far better one than the man you see. 
Recognize the godhead in your fellow-man, the 
brotherhood, and ignore the manifestation of the 
flesh which is not the true man.* 

* " A thought that stands out very prominent in modern 
philosophy and true scientific research is that man contains 
within himself the motive force of all production, that he is 
in touch now with the things that his ideals crave; that he 
is always in possession of the substance and potency of 
what he longs for, and that creation is simply manifesta- 
tion — ^an evolution or unfoldment of what lies within. Re- 



Man — God's Masterpiece i6i 

Remember that the mere accident of a brick fall- 
ing on one's head might make a criminal or a crazy 
man out of the best of men. Even the vices of man 
are steps in the ladder of his advancement as they 
are overcome. Look back on your own life and 
you will find that there have been moments when had 
you been goaded further or suffered more your 
name might have figured prominently on the crim- 
inal calendar of the nearest court. Who knows but 
the outlaw might have been the hero had he had the 
same environment. 

The bringing up, the environment, generally 
makes most of the difference between the crim- 
inal and the admired citizen, and this is just an 
incident of birth, so why be proud or set yourself 
up in judgment? " for the colonel's lady and Judy 
O'Grady are sisters under their skin." "^ 

A writer who made a very exhaustive study of the 
causes of criminality in men, wrote to five hundred 
respectable citizens asking them to relate their youth- 
ful experiences, and the replies almost invariably 
recited incidents of petty lawlessness that surprised 
him, and he could plainly see from the answers to his 
questions that it was their birth, environment and 

cognition of the life and power forever immanent in all na- 
ture is the key that makes this energy most active. 
Through human consciousness nature ascends to a point of 
glorious expression. The purpose of existence is continued 
and ever greater expression." Mind, Vol. 11. 
♦ Kipling. 



1 62 Man — God's Masterpiece 

education that came to their rescue, whereas the 
criminal in most cases had no such favorable cir- 
cumstances, his environments were generally un- 
fortunate and he sadly lacked education and good 
advisers, so that he continued on in his petty offend- 
ings until he finally developed into the criminal. 

It is a singular fact that an angry mob, so ex- 
perts say, acts not on the average intelligence of the 
masses composing it but on that of the lowest aver- 
age in the crowd; in other words, it is a rever- 
sion of the type and for the time being our criminal 
instincts assert their dominancy (the cave-man's 
desire to kill asserts itself), proving that they are 
still present with us and not as yet under complete 
Control. 

Do not forget that you are not a material body 
with material powers but a spirit with God's powers. 
We have, for ages past, been living on a material 
plane, where material things were great factors in 
our development, but we are gradually outgrowing 
this. Man, as he realizes his godly powers, will 
exercise them, and material possessions will come 
easier and easier and therefore occupy less of his 
time and interest, and the spirit and things spiritual 
will gradually assume control. And the extent of 
this control and the beneficent eflfects following no 
one has a dreaming conception of. 

The oneness of our life and God's is the great 
lesson of life. We must find out the law and obey 



Man — God's Masterpiece 163 

it * and the best guide we can get comes from the 
God within, speaking through our conscience. This 
inner urge is God pressing us into action. Every 
atom of the body has its spirit and it is this spirit 
expressing itself that constitutes the divine urge. 
" There is a light that lighteth every man that 
Cometh into the world." Professor George H. 
Harrison, of California University, speaks strongly 
on this subject. '' How can I who am God in po- 
tentiality be happy in pursuit of anything less than 
self-expression? The Kingdom of God is within 
you. If I am a Kingdom within myself, if I am the 
seed germ of infinite unfoldment, my happiness 
will be found in exploring my kingdom. As my po- 
tentialities come into view by recognition and are 
objectified by expression, then I begin to occupy my 
true place, the harmonies of the universe are 
sounded, and happiness, which is harmony, is the 
inevitable and eternal result." t 

We are the sum total of our past thoughts, J: the 
composite of our yesterdays, and what we think 

* Spinoza claimed that to live with God, to know Him, 
was the highest point of human development and happi- 
ness. Zeno held that the aim of man's existence was to 
realize his manhood; that God is the reason of the world, 
and that we must live harmoniously with nature. History 
of Philiosophy, Weber. 

t Riches, February, 1911. 

t Not as the Buddhists believe, however Jehovah in 
Hebrew means **I will be what I will be." 



164 Man — God's Masterpiece 

to-day will determine our future. Even speaking 
a thought often vitalizes it and makes of it a thing 
of action. Gautama said: ''The mind (soul) is 
everything, v^hat you think, you become." Every- 
thing made by man are but ideas worked out in 
materials, a material reflection of them. The old 
philosopher's formula was, " I think, therefore I 
am." 

Thought is an actual force of definite potency, 
a subtle, high rate of vibration in ether (perhaps a 
higher voltage of the same power as electricity), 
while a solid is a slow one, and every mind is a 
creative center. Tesla publicly announced that he 
believed the time would come when the power of 
thought might produce the action of an engine to 
be operated, say, at Sandy Hook against a fleet in 
Southampton. Professor Lombrosa noted that 
telepathy tended to show that thought is essentially 
a vibratory energy.* 

Hegel accepted Schelling's idealistic ideas and 
systematized them. Like Schelling, he held that 
mind and matter are identical.! He was an abso- 
lute idealist and believed the universe to be a uni- 
verse of ideas.J The infinite knows everything and 
as he pervades everything so does his knowledge 
which is conveyed to us as thought, through the 

* Victory of the Will, by Charbonne. 

t Biographical History of Philosophy, pp. 718, 719. 

J Ibid, p. 724. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 165 

medium of the brain. As the brain's receptivity to 
thought increases, as it does through user, the soul 
within makes greater and greater use of this ocean 
of thought surrounding us, and through the medium 
of the brain expresses it to the conscious man. So 
thought governs the universe. 

Thought creates on the ideal plan and materializes 
on the physical, so mental states become physical 
conditions. Matter is a plastic material answering 
to thought alone; is thought in its lower form.* 
The mind is an outgrowth of the soul, as the body 
is of the mind; it is the medium that connects the 
soul with the outer world. It is acted upon within 
and without. In the latter case is affected by its 
experiences, and environments and it is through 
this channel that disease is introduced into the body, 
and it is in the mind that sin finds its conception.! 
Thought before it becomes fixed in belief exists in 

* The Scandinavian Eddas says : " All succeeds to the 
will." 

t " Each individual is an epitome of his own past. 
Physically he is an epitome of all physical creation, a 
summoning up, in his own body, of all the varying ele- 
ments. Mentally he is an epitome of all that has been 
lived in mind and thought from the lowest elemental 
state up to what we call the world's civilization, for 
what all the world has lived from the dawning of con- 
sciousness to the present, is simply what all the individual 
units have lived. If man's body stands representative of 
the physical universe and if man's mind is the summoning 
up of the thought and reason of the past, then man's soul 



1 66 Man — God's Masterpiece 

space, though unrecognized by our undeveloped per- 
ceptions ; to an Edison or a Marconi, however, they 
are visible facts, to be utilized for the benefit of 
mankind. 

As we have stated before, the senses report to 
the mind and the mind must take cognizance of it 
before a thing exists for us. Destroy the nerves of 
communication through which the mental currents 
pass (and these currents are just as real as heat, 
light, or electricity) and it becomes a blank to us. 
Ideals are created in the imagination, where the 
thought pattern is cast, and this ripens into desire, 
and then into belief that one can accomplish or 
attain, and this must beget a strong will to do, 
followed by action, before it can become externally 
manifested — the picture, the desire, I can, I will, 
and the act, is the order of the process — before the 
thing can materialize. Therefore the person who 
simply desires and expects results to follow will 
fail. This disposes of the joke, '' Sit down and 
think it up and it will come to you." 

must be the microcosm of the great macrocosm, and latent 
within that soul is every quality and every power pos- 
sessed by the great Universal Soul, and man is the in- 
heritor, the real heir, of everything in God's visible and 
invisible universe.'' Sunlight of Health, p. 148, Patter- 
son. " Great men are they who see that the spiritual 
Is stronger than material force; that thoughts rule the 
world." Emerson. "Imagination rules the world," said 
Napoleon, 



Man — God's Masterpiece 167 

Your ideal world is the prophecy of what is to 
come to you, but physical productions can never 
equal mental conceptions for perfection exists only 
in the mind as an ideal; hence the frequent disap- 
pointment of the artist or musician with his work. 

Professor DuBois says : '' What limit can we 
set to man's action? So far as w^e un- 
derstand the constitution of the universe we live 
in, it is made sensitive to will and through it's 
whole extent it thrills at the touch of spirit hands. 
The action of man's will in such a universe may 
accomplish any conceivable result." "^ Everything 
therefore we sense is simply thought externalized. 
St. Paul says: "Be ye transformed by the re- 
newing of your minds." Julius Emner of Wash- 
ington, D. C, claims to have invented an electrical 
apparatus by means of which one's thought can be 
recorded upon a sensitive film and from this con- 
veyed into the thinking brain of another person so 
that the second person thinks the thoughts of the 
first person accurately. Very recently a man claims 
to be able by wireless to transmit thoughts to and 
from another without uttering a word. If every- 
thing visible is the result of thought, is it not rea- 
sonable to believe that everything thinks, to a 

* Living Universe by Henry Wood, Edgar L. Larkin of 
Lowe's Observatory says : *' the mind phasing in man is 
illimitable." 



1 68 Man — God's Masterpiece 

greater or less extent, depending on the amount 
of thought embodied in the thing itself?* 

Being the creation of thought it follows, we must 
have within us and at our command these thought 
forces, the greatest power in the world,t so why 
should we fail providing we learn how and have the 
will to use it? '' Thou shalt decree and it shall be 
established unto thee." Right thinking brings us in 
touch with the Infinite and attracts all that makes 
for a complete life. We see grief rob the strong 
man of his strength, of his life even, rage makes the 
madman more than the equal of his fellow, both 
the results of thought. 

We must cease hereafter to deal with the pheno- 
mena and learn to utilize the deep causative forces 
back of them if we would have results. i\nalyze 
yourself and you will find, wherever you are, at all 
times you are living really in the thought world and 
that the ancestor of every action is a thought. 
Through the medium of a common train of thought, 
we probably come in mental contact with others 
unknown to ourselves and so often derive benefit if 
our thoughts are good, and harm if otherwise. This 
also accounts for some of the charges of plagiarism. 

* " There is mind in everything, not only in human and 
animal life, but in plants, in minerals, and in space." 
Flammerion. 

t Henry Ford says "anything that the mind can think 
of can be worked out in actual practice. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 169 

From thought comes your happiness and your 
suffering. You think, as a writer says, and a trans- 
continental railroad is the result, and again, a great 
ocean steamer ploughs the seas, and so on without 
end.* Heretofore we have thought that happiness 
was to be obtained only in a future state, whereas it 
can be enjoyed here and now, and such is God's in- 
tention. 

You are a magnet and thought is the attracting 
power. As thought vibrations created solids so it 
must be able to dissolve them. Perhaps this 
may explain Christ's remark that faith (result of 
thought) can move mountains. The results of our 
thoughts in a previous incarnation undoubtedly 
often show up as fortune or misfortune in our 
present life, the discord arising between our ideals 
and the lives we lead often expresses itself in dis- 
ease. 

Environment, begetting the desire, has much to do 
with the physical form, for evolution, which is pro- 
gressive thought, proves that desire preceded in 
every case the growth of the organ desired f and 

* Jesus practically said that the essentials of a suc- 
cessful prayer are intelligent thought, vitalized by an un- 
derstanding faith, and belief in the reality of the thing 
desired and in the posssibility of its attainment through 
mental attraction. 

t *' Function procedes the organ and the desire which is 
spiritual is awakened by man's relations to his environ- 
ment." 



170 Man — God's Masterpiece 

that this desire carried with it the power of its 
gratification. So every reasonable aspiration of the 
human soul will sooner or later be carried to com- 
pletion when we know the law and utilize all the 
power that is in us for that purpose. 

Thus the coyote, the prairie wolf, and the jack- 
rabbit living on the prairie must depend upon speed 
in order to live, so they developed bodies suitable for 
that purpose. The tiger and the lion living in a 
wooded country hide and spring upon their prey so 
they likewise grew accordingly. The whale, finding 
itself not suited to the land, where it was defenseless 
against its enemies, took to the sea.* The wild 
rabbit in Australia encountering the wire fences of 
the farmers frequently developed claws to burrow 
under them. 

We make our own particular atmosphere the sum 
total of our thoughts. The Dharmmapadce Buddha 
says: ''All that we are is the result of what we 
have thought, it is founded on our thoughts. What 
a man thinks, that he is; this is the old secret.'' So 
also the Attawa Veda. We are also surrounded by 
an ocean of energy or thought, the thought of the 
world through the ages, and our means of communi- 
cation with it are our own thoughts. In this at- 
mosphere we live and move and have our being. 

The individual atmosphere we call our aura, com- 

* Attainment of Eflaciency. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 171 

posed of what are called N-rays,* which indicate the 
temperament of the person. f The day will come 
when all can see it plainly — a reason why we need 
another sense — and if so it will be an infallible guide 
to the character of the thinker. So the vibratory 
thought waves come back to you to work good or 
evil (for as ye sow, so must ye reap), not only on 
you but on the world as well. It is undoubtedly the 
existence of this surrounding thought atmosphere 
that accounts for the peculiarities of certain com- 
munities and nations, they being in closer rapport 
with each other by reason of their political rela- 
tionship. 

* A few scientists now admit that the human body 
throws off colored rays caHed N-rays. The papers of late 
are stating that an Italian has discovered the existence of 
another ray by utilizing which he hopes to perfect a pro- 
cess by which a powder magazine can be exploded one 
hundred miles off. 

t " The evidence of the N-ray is accumulating so rap- 
idly and is at present so convincing that its existence can 
hardly be questioned." Occult Review, Jan., 1905. *' Dr. 
Hooker, after over three hundred experiments, is satisfied 
that the rays emitted by the human body differ in color ac- 
cording to the character and temperament of the person." 
The aura is ** that psychic emanation which envelopes the 
physical form giving out the quality of the inner thoughts 
and feelings. It is sensed by those into whose presence we 
come and is pleasant or unpleasant to them." Journal of 
American Medical Association. 



CHAPTER X 

The expert now analyzing the perspiration or 
saliva can tell whether the owner has been enter- 
taining pleasant thoughts or those of anger or jeal- 
ousy. If the former, the effect upon the body is that 
of a tonic and consequently good; if the latter two 
their action on the body is distinctly poisonous.* As 
everything originated in thought,! therefore thought 
alone is real and the thought world is the real world ; 
visible things are the reflections of thought and are 
therefore shadows, and this is the shadow world. 
We look over a great city and wonder at the work 
of man, but how futile his efforts for these may 
burn down any night; yet the architects who con- 

* Pythagoras said : *' Hate and fear breed a poison in 
the blood which if continued affect eyes, ears, nose and 
the organ of digestion." 

t Plato claimed that there is an invisible world of 
ideas from which all things spring, that material things 
are but copies of ideal forms and God is the supreme 
idea, the cause of all. Aristotle, the most learned man of 
antiquity, believed in God as the absolute, unmoved, eternal 
substance, and that the Universe was thought in the mind 
of God. History of Philosophy, Weber. 

172 



Man — God's Masterpiece 173 

ceived them could reproduce them from their minds 
— the products of thought — the only place where 
the forms permanently exist. Thought being the 
only true reality,* the creative power, one can 
readily see how important it is to have one's view- 
point right, that it may not be diverted by earthly 
ambitions — where the spiritual has to be sacrificed 
■ — so that the thoughts that follow may be in har- 
mony with the world's welfare. Verily " as a man 
thinketh so is he." 

As every cell thinks, our intelligence will be the 
sum of the intelligence of the cells which are in- 
cluded in our make-up. The microscopic cell that 
is to become man has in it the promise and germ of 
mind. Thomas A. Edison says : " The intelligence 
of man, is, I take it, the sum of the intelligence of 
the atoms of which he is composed, for it is my be- 
lief that every atom is intelligent. The human body, 
I think, is maintained in its integrity by the intelli- 
gent persistence of its atoms, or rather by an agree- 
ment between its atoms so to persist. When the 
harmonious adjustment is destroyed the man dies 
and the atoms seek other relations. Every atom has 
an intelligent power of selection and is always striv- 

* Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, said that 
God was omnipotent, omnipresent and revealed himself by 
thought and that mind and matter were identical. Bio- 
graphical History of Philosophy, pp. 446, 719, Lewes. All 
Christ's cures were mental ones, showing the power of 
Buggestive thought. 



174 Man — God's Masterpiece 

ing to get into harmonious relations with other 
atoms." 

Can any one deny the thinking powers of our 
blood, when each drop of blood in the vicinity of a 
wound has sufficient intelligence either directly or in- 
directly or under orders to proceed at once to heal 
it, to cleanse the wound and to dispose of foreign 
matter, if necessary, in order to accomplish its 
work."^ With this power at our disposal who can 
realize our future discoveries appertaining to health. 
Balfour says Lord Kelvin told him " that to the man 
of science it appears as if we were trembling on the 
brink of some great discovery, which should give us 
a new view of the forces of nature, among which 
and in the midst of which we move." 

Ether is a subtle universal substance, filling all 
space. t Nothing so solid but what it permeates it. 
If the atoms and electrons possess mind, why is 

* " There is apparently behind the world of phenomena, 
as we know it, an entirely unknown region, the very first 
coast lines of which we are only just beginning to per- 
ceive." A Zewrmen Nineteenth Century Magazine, Jan., 
1904. 

t Stockwell says : " Ether is coming to be apprehended 
as an immaterial superphysical substance, filling all space, 
carrying in its infinite throbbing bosom the specks of 
aggregated dynamic force called world. It embodies the 
ultimate spiritual principle and represents the unity of 
those forces and energy from which spring, as their source, 
all phenomena, physical, mental and spiritual as they are 
known to man." It is a subtle, elastic medium, not a 



Man — God's Masterpiece 175 

it not possible that ether itself in which they ex- 
ist also has and exercises mind power ? * 

Matter is a manifestation of power, of reason 
working. Clark Maxwell speaks of matter as a 
manufactured article, the product of a prior power. 
It is now held to be the result of electric movement 
in the ether. f '' We live in the invisible ocean of a 
cosmic ether filling all space and pervading all sub- 
stance." t Sir Oliver Lodge suggests that in the 

substance, scientists think, as gravity has not attraction 
for it nor does it offer any resistance to a body moving 
through it. Is it spirit, or a substance so subtle that we 
cannot cognize it? Out of it comes electricity, which acts 
on all objects, animate and inanimate, making magnets 
of them. From these electrical waves come light and heat. 
It is now thought by many scientists that it retains a 
picture of all that has ever transpired. 

* Cope says the basis of life and mind lies back of the 
atom and may be found in the universal ether. Henstreet 
says : *' Mind in the matter is no more unnatural than 
mind in the flesh and blood." Dolbear says : *' Possibly 
the ether may be the medium through which mind and 
matter react. Out of the ether could emerge under proper 
circumstances other phenomena, such as life or mind, 
or whatever may be in the substratum." " It is neces- 
sary to represent the atom as a structure containing a 
large number of electrons in steady, orbital motion round 
each other, somewhat as the planets move within the 
solar system." Recent Developments of Physical Science by 
Whetham, also the New Knowledge, by Duncan. Heraclitus 
held that the universal ether was the Divine Reason, the 
Soul. Biographical History of Philosophy, pp. 66, 67, Lewes. 

t Christian Theism, by L. Walker. 

t Getting Together, p. 20, Rev. J. M. Whiton. 



176 Man — God's Masterpiece 

study of ether there might be found understanding 
beside which all present knowledge would shrink to 
a pin point. 

The great Doctor Jobard, of Paris, said that 
electricity (which comes out of the ether) con- 
tained thought, expressed intelligence, was perhaps 
the key to the discovery of the universal spirit 
and ether is the seat or medium of that power.* 
Matter, says science, is not as we see it, a solid, but 
is a rate of vibration — infinitesimal molecules, com- 
posed of atoms, which are indestructible, and vary 
only by forming different combinations moving 
around each other infinitely fast, but never touch- 
ing. Duncan, in the New Knowledge says it is 
electricity and nothing but electricity. When the 
vibrations are harmonious they can pass through 
each other. The smallest division of matter for- 
merly known to science was the molecule, which 
was thought to be a unit and therefore indivisible 
Later, however, scientists discovered that it was 
composed of innumerable atoms, each atom having 
the power to think, as shown in its likes and dis- 
likes or attractions and repulsions, and which they 
vaguely designated as energy and called them, ** the 

* " Radio- Activity has proved that matter is not some- 
thing eternal but is itself the result of evolution and is 
probably undergoing disintegration and transmutation. 
It is a manifestation of power acting in the ether." Chris- 
tian Theism and A Spiritual Monism, p. 70, Walker. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 177 

foundation stones and building blocks of the uni- 
verse/' the '' Alphabet of God." These also they re- 
garded as the unit and very simple, but now we 
know that they are wonderfully complex and that 
they have a structure which has all the features of a 
solar system, with its central sun, planets and 
moon.* 

Science now claims a new subdivision of the atom 
into electrons out of which everything is composed, 
differing only in their number and combination, and 
which the majority of scientists say are unit charges 
of electricity with positive and negative poles; 
dormant energy unrecognizable to us but con- 
taining all the potentialities of everything that 
ever has or ever will exist. A feeble rate of vibra- 
tion at first and later on recognizable as electrons, 
atoms, molecules and the basis of all things mate- 

* Authorities say that if a drop of water was magnified as 
big as the earth we would see the molecules composing it 
no larger than the original drop with great spaces be- 
tween them. Another says small miscroseopic animal- 
eulae exist so infinitesimal that millions of them occupy 
the space of a pinhead. Each has tiny organs, and fluids 
circulate in these organs and these fluids are composed 
of molecules. New Thought, Dec, 1908, William Walker 
Atkinson. "Though we speak of atoms, what really is 
revealed to us is power, power to build and maintain the 
whole universe, and this power reveals itself as spirit 
within our own consciousness." Christian Theism, p. 205, 
Walker. 



178 Man — God's Masterpiece 

rial.* An electron is a certain quantity or charge 
of electricity in excessively rapid motion. Electri- 
city is non-matter as it has no weight, nor does it 
fill space but it is energy as it has the power of 
doing work. As a spinning electron, however, it 
becomes the foundation of matter as it there ac- 
quires mass. There is no such thing as solid matter, 
as all the atoms composing it, are not united and 
are whirling rapidly. So instead of these being 
matter and energy, as scientists formerly claimed, 
they have now reduced it to one thing, energy, ap- 
pearing in multiple forms and shapes. f Electrons 
have their likes and dislikes and form groups and 
combinations accordingly. 

From tiny electrons to man, by the power and 
exercise of thought, through infinite stages, is a 
wonderful advance, but from man to God will make 
a still greater step in evolution. Heat, light, elec- 
tricity, magnetism, etc., science says, are all only 

* Henley: It took the wonderful mind of a Joseph J. 
Thomson to discover the only entities in existence — elec- 
trons — and of a Robert A. Millikin to isolate and weigh 
one. Lord Kelvin says "there are 100,000 electrons in 
an atom of matter." 

t Prof. G. P. Serviss, an eminent English authority, to 
give us an idea of the size of an electron, compares it "to 
a one hundred foot square room, with seven hundred specks 
of dust in it, each about the size of a needle point and all 
in rapid vibration and motion round each other, but never 
touching. The big room is the atom and the specks are 
electrons.'* Prof. Edgar L. Larkin, of Lowe Observatory, 



Man — God's Masterpiece 179 

modes of motion and the cause of this motion is the 
attraction and repulsion existing between the atoms, 
likes and dislikes, which are manifestations of men- 
tality, which latter is the ultimate motive power. 
What matter is and does is determined by the power 
that constitutes it and acts through it.* As indica- 
tive of the marvelous energy by which we are sur- 
rounded, Whetham says f '' The energy available 
for radiation in one ounce of radium is sufficient to 
raise a weight of something like ten thousand tons 
a mile high." While one grain only of hydrogen 
contains sufficient energy to raise one million tons 
through a heighth exceeding three hundred feet. 

Science has finally decided after wandering into 
space for many centuries to pay attention to man 
himself and has begun to investigate the soul of 
man, a study which will lead finally to God Himself. 
^' God is not personality, but he is personal to every 

says: "Nothing exists but electrons, these were created by 
a Creator and the Creator was entirely mental, is mind. 
All matter, whatever be its nature, all objects were formed 
of the created electrons, also by mental force." Shintone 
says that in a cubic centimeter of water there are about 
ninety thousand million billion atoms, all in constant 
motion, but, as small as this is, the electron is infinitely 
smaller, for twelve thousand seven hundred billion electrons 
placed side by side will only make a row one inch long. 
Prof. Lodge says that electrons are to atoms as a grain 
of duckshot is to Birmingham town hall. 

* Christian Theism, p. 78. 

t Matter, Motion and Ether, pp. 239-241. 



i8o Man — God's Masterpiece 

personality in existence. He is personal to each 
of us because he is in actual personal touch with 
each of us. He lives in all, therefore he is personal 
to all and can give personal attention to the needs 
of each and all. God lives in us and we in Him and 
within every man there is a shrine at which he 
can worship.* 

" So a man is in the Lord and the Lord in him " f 
" You carry Him within yourself and you perceive 
not that you are polluting Him by impure thoughts 
and dirty deeds." % Also all Stoics held this doc- 
trine § " That good thing which was committed 
unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth 
in us." II " And what agreement hath the temple of 
God with idols for ye are the temple of the living 
God, as God hath said : "' I will dwell in them and 
walk in them." 

" Stranger I must not, e'en if a worse man come, 
111 treat a stranger, for all come from Zeus 
Strangers and poor." 

Odyssey XIV, 55, etc." 

* " As to inteUigence you are not inferior to the gods 
nor less." Discourses of Epictetus p. 45. " Will you not 
remember who you are and whom you rule — slaves and 
that they are the offspring of Zeus. Ibid, 47. "Wretch 
you are carrying about a god with you, and you know it 
not." Ibid, 122. Also Euripides Apud Theon Soph Prog. 
Yne also Obid Fast VI and Horace Sat. 11-697. 

t Swedenberg Angelic Wisdom, 240. 

t Discourses of Epictetus. 

§ 2 Tim. 1 : 14. 11 2 Cor. vi : 16. 



Man — God's Masterpiece i8i 

" All that the Father hath is mine, and being in- 
finite he is personally interested in me, even though 
he be personally interested in all the other souls 
in the universe at the same time.'' * At last science 
is admitting that personality is not a chemical re- 
action, is not material, but spiritual, or at least 
many scientists are. That everything is bound to- 
gether in one continuous chain, an unfolding process 
from chaos to cosmos and that eventually we must 
all glorify God, thru our own personality. 

Man must go onward and attain a godlike perfec- 
tion or revert to the brute, there can be no half-way. 
Wisdom comes from God, therefore '' to know God 
is the beginning of wisdom." Look for the good in 
all things and there you will find your God and 
it is worshipping the god in man that will bring 
us closer to God and man. A miracle never ex- 
isted, for it is against natural law and as God and 
law are the same, that would mean an impossible 
contradiction. The supernatural is simply the na- 
tural not understood. To love God and serve him 
is the fulfilment of the law. So also there can be 
no such thing as inherent depravity for all is good 
or of God.f 

All being of God, therefore, we are all on com- 
mon ground, for we all draw from the same source 

♦Cosmic World, Nov., 1909. 

t How can the intelligent Catholic believe that the soul 
goes to ages of expiatory torment? Does he? 



i82 Man— God's Masterpiece 

— one having, however, the power of absorbing 
more than another, and some being further advanced 
than others in consequence. Each of us should re- 
cognize this Godhead in his fellow-man, knowing 
this to be the true man ; this is especially important 
if he is doing wrong and we want to reform him. 
We also are benefited, for as we find good in all so 
do we get good from all. 

Christ never judged sinners; He looked beyond 
and saw the God and loved them. Remember we all 
inherit predatory instincts, and the difference be- 
tween the good and the bad is only a difference in 
the stage of development. We have all been on that 
plane at one time in our existence and we owe this 
much charity to our brother. Beecher once said: 
Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in 
which to bury the faults of his friends. 

We are also stewards of our wealth; "^ the excess 
over and above the amount necessary for our full- 
est development in order to render ourselves best 
able to help our fellow-man, we hold in trust for 
him. Recognize that trust and the results are satis- 
factory, violate it and the result is unhappiness. 
Self -development through service is the law, for 
self-searching is seeking for the God within; but we 
must realize our oneness with everything and work 
for all. Thus we learn to save our lives by losing 
them, for holiness is wholeness with God and then 
♦Millionaire is the Sanscrit of robber. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 183 

only are we under the guidance of God the whole. 
Christ said : " He that is greatest among you shall 
be your servant." 

Love begets harmony, therefore, love is the ful- 
filling of the law.* It is the greatest vibratory 
force in the universe. If we would have the world 
love us we must first love all the world, for like at- 
tracts like. If discontented with the world and un- 
happy, remember it is your individual spirit, seeking 
to work in harmony with its surroundings, and to 
end its present state of friction. Once we work in 
unison, infinite forces are at our disposal. The true 
worship of God is obeying his laws. 

A drop of water, a grain of dust, has all the po- 
tency of the ocean or the desert. A separate drop or 
grain has little or no influence — it is only by unison 
with the whole that it acquires its greatness. So 
we can exercise great power only when we realize 
our unity with all creation. '^ Mutual aid is the law 
of nature, extending to animals as well as men, for 
animals of a species come together for mutual aid 
and protection, w^hile the unsociable species on the 
contrary are doomed to decay." f 

Pursue your own selfish aims and you isolate 
yourself from the source of all good, all power, 

* '' He that loveth not, knoweth not God." I John, 4 : 9. 

t Mutual Aid among Animals and Savages, — Ascent of 
Man by Drummond — Origin and Growth of the Moral In- 
stinct, by A. Sutherland. 



184 Man — God's Masterpiece 

and the friction resulting begets sickness, suffering, 
sin and heart weariness but as you eliminate self 
God comes in. It is the antithesis of love and there- 
fore opposed to God's will at this stage of our ev- 
olution for love has now supplanted selfishness in 
the divine economy. Realize then that self -advance- 
ment is no longer to be acquired at the expense of 
the community; that this law of selfishness applies 
only on the sensuous plane of our existence, which 
plane we are gradually leaving for the plane of 
world consciousness, the next great stage of pro- 
gression. 

" Now this is the law of the jungle. 
As old and true as the sky. 
And the wolf that shall keep it shall prosper 
But the wolf that shall break it must die; 
As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, 
The law moveth forward and back. 
For the strength of the pack is the wolf 
And the strength of the wolf is the pack." 

Kipling. 

'^ When you deny yourself and follow Christ, 
you remove the personal self from the throne of 
your being and enthrone the superior spiritual self 
instead. There is therefore no sacrifice; you lose 
nothing but your limitations, while you gain every- 
thing that the Kingdom of God holds in store for 



Man — God's Masterpiece 185 

man. The belief that it is necessary to sacrifice 
something of actual value in order to gain the life 
eternal, is not the truth. Poverty in the personal life 
does not produce spiritual riches, nor does the sacri- 
fice of temporal joy produce the bliss of heaven." 
Ask yourself the question why are you here? For 
your happiness depends upon your answer and liv- 
ing accordingly. Life will pay big dividends to 
those who seek out the law and obey it. If we are 
spirits, fleshly gratifications will not fill the bill, and 
you will find incidentally that the fear of death les- 
sens as material pleasures lose their hold. The idea 
of self-sacrifice must be eliminated; so long as we 
think that we have to sacrifice all that is good in the 
visible world in order to gain the joys and riches 
of the invisible, we are out of harmony with the 
beautiful order of the cosmos. " In the true order 
of things all that is real is good and all that is good, 
man has the privilege to enjoy — now. . . . The only 
things that we are required to sacrifice are our ills, 
our defects, our weaknesses, our shortcomings, and 
our limitations; in brief, we are required .to re- 
move the personal self and its imperfections from 
our world of existence. . . To try to save the 
personal life is to live exclusively for the limitations 
of our external existence; in consequence, the mind 
becomes so absorbed in the lesser life without that 
it is wholly unconscious of the greater life within. 
Jo live exclusively for the personal life is to be 



i86 Man — God's Masterpiece 

separated from the inner life, and therefore we 
are not receiving any more life. The personal life, 
however, that we are trying to save will be gradually 
used up and thus we will lose what we are so anx- 
ious to save." * The price of happiness ever is 
work. Love, understanding, and work, are the 
main factors in our uplift,t and the keynote to all 
success will generally be found to be patience and 
drudgery. The strength and quality of will is a de- 
termining factor and mediocrity is largely of their 
own creation. So society being a common brother- 
hood owes to each of its members, not a living, as 
so many think, for that would deprive them of the 
priceless heritage of work, but an opportunity to 
acquire happiness through work at a living wage. 
Therefore all charities that do not provide a man 
work (when he can work) deprive him of his rights 
and his manhood and eventually make a pauper of 
him. All usefulness comes through labor and '' the 
devil hires the unemployed/' 

* Cosmic World, Dec, 1909. ''From the dawn of life 
altruism has been no less essential than egoism. Self- 
sacrifice is no less primordial than self-preservation." 
Data of Ethics, pp. 201, to 203, etc. Through Nature to 
God. 

t Cervantes says that every man is the son of his own 
work. 



CHAPTER XI 

Happiness is a duty you owe to yourself and to 
those about you, and it is your attitude towards 
the problems of life that determines it.* Scientists 
say the secret of happiness is adaptation to environ- 
ment. We know it never comes to those who de- 
vote their lives to seeking for it f but comes indi- 
rectly, a by-product, as it were, most frequently in 
doing and thinking for others. 

Material joys finally pall on the taste while spirit- 
ual ones increase the capacity for happiness, and 
since we are spirit this would be only natural. 
" Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see 
God '' — in everything. It is what you are, not what 

* The Japanese consider it a disgrace to go about be- 
moaning one's fate. 

t '' She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth," 
said St. Paul. Material happiness is too often gained 
at the expense of our fellow-man. We either deprive him 
of something that he might have enjoyed or wrest it from 
him. In either case it arouses antagonism (What Tolstoy 
Taught, p. 94, Bolton Hall) and puts us at odds with the 
world, whereas spiritual acquisitions are free, are limit- 
less, and our possession of them helps others to acquire 
them. It puts us in harmony with the world and so gives 
us lasting happiness. 

187 



1 88 Man — God's Masterpiece 

you have, that determines happiness. I notice that 
every rich man's assets are scheduled at his death in 
the surrogate's office. '' The shroud has no pock- 
ets." * 

In the olden days a certain Eastern potentate, 
having everything at his command and so denied 
the comfort of and absorption in work, had lost all 
interest in life and consequently became sick. His 
wise old physician, who understood, prescribed for 
his condition that he sleep one night in the shirt 
of a perfectly happy man and he would become 
well. So, mounted on his elephant with his retinue 
following, he started out to find the owner of the 
shirt. At first he visited the houses of the richest 
and most powerful nobles, but all had some wishes 
unfulfilled, and many were even unhappy. He 
tried then the merchant class but could not find 
his man. So sadly he started for home, but on 
his way far ahead he heard peals of laughter and 
saw a careless beggar rolling in the dust. A 
thought struck him and he ordered the beggar to be 
brought before him and asked him if he was happy. 
'' Yes, thoroughly so." *' Then you are the man I 
am looking for. Give me your shirt." But the 
beggar laughed right merrily. '' Indeed, I have 
not a shirt to my back," he said. The King then 
saw that happiness did not depend on material pos- 

* Spanish Proverb. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 189 

sessions or surroundings but was a mental condi- 
tion, and, pondering, because well again. 

*' He who longs to wear gold and purple is poor." 
** If you see anybody wail or complain, call him a 
slave, though he be clad in purple." '' Wherever I 
go it will be well with me, for I carry within m.e what 
will make me happy." * '' May thy will not mine 
be done. May thy will and mine be one." Re- 
member, as Emerson says: *' Most of the shadows 
of life are caused by standing in your own sun- 
shine." Emerson also says : '* What you are 
speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say." The 
Bible emphasizes humility, forgetfulness of self, 
as all-important. '' He that humbleth himself 
shall be exalted." " He that loseth his life, shall 
find it." " The first shall be last, and the last shall 
be first." ^^ Pride goeth before a fall." "The 
greatest among you shall be your servant," etc. 

The life of each one is the life of the whole 
and the only royal road to happiness is through 
self- forget fulness. " Man is meant for happiness 
and that happiness is in him." Tolstoy '* To enter 
Heaven, man must take it with him." Henry 
Drummond. Everything being good or God, noth- 
ing happens but is a manifestation of God. '' I am 
the Lord and there is none else. I form the light 
and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. 

♦ Marcus Aurelius. 



IQO Man — God's Masterpiece 

I the Lord do all these things/' * It is unthinkable 
that God would create evil, sorrow and sickness 
as we have hitherto believed, merely to oppose him- 
self, when he is all in all and being all-wise, must 
have had a wise purpose in creating. It is also un- 
thinkable that he would have less kindness than man 
himself. '' Here lie I, David Elginbrod, be merci- 
ful to me, O God as I would be if I were thee, and 
thou David Elginbrod/' 

Sorrow and sickness are disciplinary; like sin, 
they warn of a wrong adjustment, a perverted use. 
There is no such thing as punishment as we have un- 
derstood it in olden days. It is simply cause and 
effect and resuts invariably from an infraction of 
the law. They are only temporary exhibitions of a 
friction notifying us to come into harmony with the 
whole, when these adverse conditions will pass away. 
If it were not so, we would deny ourselves harmony 
or heaven forever more. Had we been made perfect, 
under the law of contrast, we could not have appre- 
ciated it, for we must have experienced imperfection 
to do so. The joy of doing for others would be 
taken from out of our lives also. Rewards and pun- 
ishments of a most positive kind are necessary to 
make man do his best. 

Christ bade his disciples particularly and fre- 
quently to heal the sick, by prayer to bring the 

♦Isaiah 45:6, 7. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 191 

patient into harmony with the whole and so remove 
the cause of friction, of which sickness was simply 
the outward evidence. Everything must come out 
right in the end for each and all of us, or God's work 
is imperfect and he himself a partial failure, inas- 
much as he has done some poor work.* This is, 
of course, impossible. So the drunkard dying in 
the gutter, the murderer upon the gallows, cannot 
be utter failures. They must have acquired some 
valuable experience. It is the thorn strewn path 
many have to take, to learn the bigger things of 
life. 

To have exhausted the possibilities of the false 
is one way of arriving at the truth and a way re- 
plete with experience; as we eliminate error we 
progress; absolute monarchy, divine right, caste, 
temporal power of the church and slavery had their 
good features when existent, but are now cast aside 
as error.f The roots of all social values in the 
world are planted in darkness and ignorance. Men 
have only grown wise by the rejection of their mis- 
takes. J So, too, were this life to finish here, how 
impotent, how futile would be the labors of an 

* Have faith in a God that can create *' the ant, that 
viewpoint of a personality, that mere speck of being, yet 
including within the infinitesimal porportions a clever, busy 
brain, a soldier, a politician, and a merchant." Prose 
Francies, La Gallienne. 

t The New Religion of the Future, Guyau, p. 15. 

t Religion in the Making, p. 1, S. G. Smith. 



192 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Almighty God (he would cease to be Almighty were 
this true) through the countless cycles of time! It 
would be the most stupendous and the most pitiable 
failure in the world's history — again, it is unthink- 
able. 

"Life," says Herbert Spencer, "is a continu- 
ous readjustment between internal and external 
relations/' Always remember the rewards to fol- 
low, the happiness finally attained, are far beyond 
human conception. One great fact stands out pre- 
eminent in the world's history, and that is, that in 
order to advance to a higher plane and where old 
time custom must be uprooted, the penalty paid for 
the abolition of the old is often simply terrific. Thus 
the temporal power of the Pope; the abolition of the 
divine right of Kings; the dethronement of King 
Alcohol (and we hope soon of the God of War) 
have cost oceans of blood, and treasures incalculable. 
But it is worth the price paid for those who come 
hereafter. 

Back of our daily life is an unrest, a desire to 
better present conditions, a divine urge, which 
is the basis of all progress; the law of divine dis- 
content is the law of growth. Scan closely your 
daily thoughts and eliminate those that are bad, 
lest they become a habit, be guided by the still small 
voice within, which as you heed will gradually be- 
come more easily heard. If you would develop the 
Godhead in yourself, bring out the love in you, for 



Man — God's Masterpiece 193 

God is love. '' He whose heart is full of tender- 
ness and truth, who loves mankind better than him- 
self and in whose heart is no place for hate may be 
another Christ/' 

Do not above all things become the victim of 
auto-suggestion. Psychologists say that morbid 
selfishness is the basis of many of the diseases here- 
tofore classified neurasthenia. Don't let fear, be- 
gotten of its dam unfaith, stand ever ready with 
its doleful devitilizing suggestions. Unknown to 
yourself, you assume a mental attitude of depres- 
sion or of I can't that is sure to bring unhappiness 
in its train. A cheerful frame of mind, a refusal 
to be depressed would work a wonderful difference 
in your health and happiness. Above all things con- 
trol your temper as it reacts on yourself; poisons 
your system and puts you out of harmony with God. 
It upsets the nervous system, begets dyspepsia and 
a hundred other ills. As a god, the real you, the 
spirit cannot be affected. Remember that suffer- 
ing is of to-day, is transient only whereas happi- 
ness is man's normal condition and therefore ever- 
lasting. The very fact that we suffer so indi- 
cates that we have perhaps plumbed the depths; 
have learned much and are ready for a change for 
the better. It is the body and its desires that drag 
you down and cause you unhappiness. Analyze 
your next unhappy period and you will find the fore- 
going to be true. Drive it out by thinking of some- 



194 Man — God's Masterpiece 

thing pleasant, for no two trains of thought can 
occupy the mind at the same time.* Remember all 
life has something in it for you, something in com- 
mon with you, for are you not a part of the whole? 
Ruskin says: ''There is nothing in life that has 
not its lessons for us or its gifts.'' Demand daily 
more of your true self, the God within, and have 
implicit faith that it will come; it surely will if for 
the spirit's best, for such is the law. Let life be- 
come a daily unfoldment of the beauty and powers 
of God and the harmony generated will make of 
earth a heaven for you. 

One author says that to accomplish anything 
worth while, there first comes the desire, then the 
mental picture of the uplifting, then the strong 
affirmation that one will live the life, then the 
conflict with its attendant suffering and frequent 
failures, finally the victory. But even the failure 
is a partial success, for it has to its credit the 
effort made and is likewise valuable for the experi- 
ence gained. 

One cannot appreciate anything understandingly 
without knowing it from all standpoints. One can- 
not realize the height of a mountain without a pre- 
vious descent into the valley below, or recognize 
black until one has seen white, or sweet until he has 

* " For nothing which is independent of the will can 
hinder or damage the will, and the will can only hinder 
or damage itself." Discourses of Epictetus, p. 245. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 195 

known the opposite. In everything this law of com- 
parison applies, we must have something with 
which to make a contrast. John Fiske, the great 
scientist, said : '' Things are distinguishable only 
by their unlikeness. We know nothing save as con- 
trasted with something else. If we knew but one 
color we should know no color at all. If our ears 
were filled by the roar of Niagara, unbroken by any 
other sound, the effect on us would be unbroken 
silence. Had we never known pain, we should 
never know pleasure.'' '' Consciousness without 
contrast is impossible.'' '^ Why should it not apply 
equally to holiness or goodness? What can we 
know of them under the law unless in a previous ex- 
istence we have experienced the miseries and ugli- 
ness of sinning? And we could not have come up 
from the brute and the savage without the record 
and experience that goes with these stages of sav- 
agery and brutality. Our capacity for happiness 
and goodness have grown through experience; we 
can only know things as we have seen them through 
their relations, and the mind is the judge of those 
relations. If this is true, why be so hard on those 
in our midst who are acquiring this really needed 
experience when the best of us have sinned so woe- 
fully in the past. Why should we punish the in- 

♦ " He can fall lower than the brute on his way to a 
communion with his God." Practical Idealism, Hyde, p. 
18. 



196 Man — God's Masterpiece 

dividual who is of God and therefore good, when 
his actions are simply the results of impedimenta in 
the way of the expression of his true self. Why not 
remove these obstructions and so assist him to 
develop normally. The law that punishes is founded 
on the old Jewish law of an eye for an eye and a 
tooth for a tooth, which is wrong now and man's 
law therefore is opposed to God's, and consequently 
erroneous; also Infinite love saves all, mothers all. 
We are living proofs that he is simply on a lower 
plane of existence; now occupying the plane that 
we formerly did, and will improve if only given 
time and opportunity. On the contrary, such harsh 
judgment on our part is proof positive that we are 
sadly in need of a further enlightenment before 
we reach the Christly plane, where we know too 
much to condemn. Of course, we cannot allow them 
to proceed at our expense, but we should not punish, 
we should reform. We should assist the offender 
to a higher plane and help him acquire this ex- 
perience in a way less harmful to his fellow-man. 
Undoubtedly in a previous incarnation he must 
have had considerable experience or he would not 
be transferred to this plane.* What he needs now 
is some one to show him the way so that he can ad- 

* If so, what right have we to execute him and so re- 
move him from this sphere where God saw fit to place him? 



Man — God's Masterpiece 197 

just himself, can come *' in tune with the infinite," 
and as his brothers it is our duty to do it. 

Work without obstacles to overcome would be- 
come very monotonous, we would be deprived of 
the greatest pleasures of achievement. So suffering 
in the divine plan seems necessary during certain 
stages only,* or our characters would be negative 
ones, lacking the tempering process of adversity. 
What is the value of the picture without the offset 
of the shadow? We must combat and overcome 
these obstacles, however painful the process. Hart- 
man and others go so far as to say that if grief 
and evil did not exist there would be no religion. 
From our feelings of dependence, of fear, of wants 
unsatisfied, of our need of someone to love or con- 
fide in, springs a desire for help from some su- 
perior being.f The Basque says: '' If you want to 
learn to pray, go to sea." '' What thou hast not by 
suffering bought, presume thou not to teach." — 
Marcus Aurelius. But this period of struggle is 
only a condition and therefore transitory, and when 
contrasted with eternity has but a very brief exist- 
ence. Success is the fruitage of past experience, and 
this has led through the path of frequent failure. 
Knowing God to be all good we know that there 

* '* Sufferings, then, of the trying character are useful 
to us, whether we choose or not.'* Discourses of Epictetus, 
p. 293, Long. 

t The New Religion of the Future, Guyau, p. §. 



198 Man — God's Masterpiece 

must be some compensation for the suffering and 
degradation we endure, else we must deprive God 
of his quality of goodness or of power. '* Out of 
struggle comes rest, out of despair springs hope, 
out of darkness, light; and out of the tomb, new 
life." Back of all spiritual improvement is a de- 
sire for something better, the need of something 
that will comfort and sustain. 

In good times, so-called, this longing is dormant, 
stifled by the pursuit and gratification of sense de- 
sires, but when the loved ones are gone and riches 
have taken wings or sickness racks you and perhaps 
isolates you from your kind, then communion with 
your Maker becomes necessary. You cry out for 
help, you seek out the law, recognize and follow 
it, and receive infinite comfort and advancement. 
Therefore, what we in our ignorance, judging only 
from a material standpoint, call bad times, are really 
the reverse, for it is the period of our life when we 
acquire and store up eternal values. Of the two ex- 
tremes, it is the best. A grand old school is that 
of adversity, even though the hours are long and 
the lessons hard. It is from the vale of suffering, 
looking through the portal of sad experience only, 
that we come face to face with our Creator. 

Pain and suffering * in time destroy the desire 

♦ Pain begets thought, and thought begets action, and 
out of it an come experiences, vastly useful to mankind, 
also the appreciation of its usefulness adds greatly to 



Man — God's Masterpiece 199 

to sin. They raise a hellish condition from which 
one is anxious to escape, thus begetting finally a 
spiritual hunger, probably working along the lines 
of action and reaction. The sufferer halts and seeks 
out a remedy investigating from effect to cause. 
The result is a compliance with the law, and the 
pain proves, therefore, in the end beneficient. With- 
out the penalty there would be no end of sinning,* 
and therefore no advancement — in short, a failure 
of God's laws. " Pain stands as a sentry on guard 
to warn one away from the path that may lead to 
death, and its duty ceases and it passes on, for it 
can be of no more use when death actually comes 
and we pass over, as Hammond says, " without 
pain and without regret/' f '' Any plane viewed 
from the altitude of a higher one seems evil from 
relativity rather than opposing abstract quality. 
The animal in man is not to be extirpated but to be 
used as an efficient helper." " All sin is virtue un- 
evolved, Release the angel from the Clod, Go love 
thy brother up to God, Behold each problem solved, 
'AH sin is virtue unevolved.'' J John Fiske says: 

our power to bear it, and multiplies the rewards we re- 
ceive from it. 

* Paul says we are to " glory in tribulation knowing 
that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experi- 
ence, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed 
because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts." 

fLaw of Mental Medicine, Hudson. 

t Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 



200 Man — God's Masterpiece 

" Evil is simply the lower stage of living as looked 
at from the higher state." Prof. Josiah Royce of 
Harvard teaches that '* evil is nothing positive but 
merely the deprivation of Good." 

We make the mistake of judging everything from 
our present existence. We do not look as we should 
from the standpoint of the ages and realize what 
has been accomplished in the past. If we would 
only broaden our view we could eliminate worry 
and despair, by learning to trust in the goodness 
and greatness of the power that has gradually de- 
veloped through the centuries so great a being as 
we really are, originating from such humble, even 
ignoble, sources. If from this same viewpoint we 
would look still further ahead, our reason would as- 
sure us that our future must be one with our Cre- 
ator, a state that is something too great for our con- 
ception. Through all we see the dominancy of law 
until we are forced to conclude that God is law 
(a God whom we can never define, for to define is 
to confine, and therefore limit God), and if we 
would reap the results we must seek out this law 
and harken to it and so hasten our progress, re- 
membering that for every ill there is a remedy, 
viz, compliance with the law. 

It is wisdom on our part, and the will of God 
as well, that we leave behind us as soon as possi- 
ble the stage of sin and suffering. No longer must 
we deem sin and suffering and all the discom- 



Man — God's Masterpiece 201 

forts of life, as the will of God, to be endured 
patiently and uncomplainingly, as our forefathers 
did (without an effort to remove the causes and 
end the friction and so graduate from this stage,) 
and stone the first man who used an umbrella, 
because they claimed it was an unholy protest against 
the will of God, and that he should endure the wet- 
ting. No longer are we satisfied to say with the 
gentleman living in Elizabeth's reign that some peo- 
ple were trying to introduce an absurd fashion of 
using knives and forks at meal time, but as for him 
he would not, for God had provided him with ten 
fingers and thumbs for that purpose and expected 
him to be satisfied with them. 



CHAPTER XII 

To those who are suffering, time seems in many 
cases endless, yet under the law of contrast they 
are attaining a capacity for happiness later on that 
will countless times over-compensate them for the 
pain they have endured. The child's doll in time 
breaks, and she grieves sadly and wishes perhaps 
that she had never had it, but the more experienced 
parents know that the doll has served a purpose 
in developing in the child the maternal instinct, 
bringing forth its love and pain and solicitude for 
the doll that has passed away. Remember at this 
time the promise given : '^ I will never fail thee.'* 
"If thou will diligently harken to the voice of the 
Lord, thy God, I will put none of these diseases 
upon you, for I am the Lord that healeth thee." * 
'' And the Lord will take away from thee all sick- 
ness." t 

The unfortunate is he who has gone through life 
and suffered little, had no reverses but has had 
all that wealth could purchase, for such a one has 
learned but little and therefore must acquire his 

♦ Deut. 32 : 39. t Deut. 7 : 9-15. 

202 



Man — God's Masterpiece 203 

knowledge in some future incarnation. And even 
he is never happy and ofttimes leads a far sad- 
der life than a humbler brother especially one 
who is accomplishing something. Life itself is 
measured not by the span of years but by the ex- 
perience gained, what we have thought and felt. 
Out of the many forms of evil to man sprang up 
the necessity for self-preservation, which finally 
took the form of co-operation, from which sprang 
all modern civilization. Had it not been for the 
existence of these so-called evils, man might still 
to-day be the ancient cave-dweller, the primeval can- 
nibal of those times. 

Scientists say that the music of the fields began 
with the fear and pain of birds. Plato said no one 
was fit to rule who had not learned to understand 
man through his own sorrow. Christ declared he 
had come to change nothing in the world but human 
desires, for nothing else needed changing. '' Could 
we raise the veil that enshrouds eternal truth, we 
should see that behind Nature's crudest works there 
are the sweet springs of divinest tenderness and 
love," says John Fiske. The brightest, sunniest- 
hearted man Goldsmith ever met was a poor, de- 
formed, crippled slave, wearing a chain, whom he 
met in Flanders. 

We can only truly possess what is good, for we 
ourselves are good, and, as like attracts like and un- 
likes repel, we can only assimilate that which is like 



204 Man — God's Masterpiece 

unto ourselves.* Therefore, '' All things are yours " 
means all desirable things, all that you can assimi- 
late, and, since you are a spirit, must necessarily re- 
fer to things directly or indirectly affecting the 
spirit. Money does not answer this qualification ex- 
cept so far as it is necessary to properly clothe, feed, 
and house the body.f 

Money is attracted by the man on a material plane 
who loves it and works for it (under the law that like 
attracts like), generally at the expense of his better 
spiritual self, for he has to concentrate deeply to the 
exclusion of the better things. The man who is fur- 
ther advanced considers it but a means to an end and 
therefore receives less of it. The possession of it is 
no criterion of success in life, which is spiritual not 
material. In the majority of cases it rather repre- 
sents a foolish wasting of valuable time. All men of 
great spiritual attainments, from Christ down, have 
known this and one of them have ever desired or at- 
tained riches, their greatness has always consisted in 
doing something for others. When the present mo- 
nopolization of money by the rich shall have passed 
away, all fear of social revolutions and m.uch of the 
public discontent will have perished with it. 

* The greatest of all possessions is self-possession, for 
it gives you power to command all other possessions. 

t Baron Anselm Rothschild said: "In a word, aU that 
I get out of wealth is the duty of preserving and increas- 
ing it,'' nor did Nathan RothschUd get any more happiness 
out of the money making. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 205 

Man for ages has been controlled to a greater or 
less extent by his surroundings. At one stage he 
was entirely so controlled and is so now to a lesser 
extent. Is it not natural then that under the circum- 
stances he should have gradually built up for him- 
self limitations, the result of past experiences, that 
it now becomes very difficult for him to divest him- 
self of, especially as almost up to the present time 
he has been taught that he is a grovelling worm, 
endured but despised of God? 

The new uplift with the central idea of man's 
divinity — that he is a part of the cosmic whole — 
must needs take some time to do away with these 
conditions and release and place in command the 
God within. But when this is accomplished and 
the thought of '' I can't/' that great mental barrier 
of the ages (and the fear it conjured up, the grave- 
yard of otherwise successful action) has been done 
away with, the results will be marvelous. 

Fear is a negative, discordant vibration w^hich puts 
you out of alignment with achievement by depriving 
you of faith in your powers to achieve success. It 
denies the power of God, and is therefore the great- 
est opposing force of God's — the only real devil that 
exists. When fear at a moment's notice can numb 
the mental faculties, cause the vital organs to refuse 
to work and culminate at times in death, what must 
be the effect of millions of years of fearing, and 
conversely what a great and beneficial reaction will 



2o6 Man — God's Masterpiece 

follow when this fear is dissipated! And this will 
follow when man can realize he is a god and as 
such beyond all earthly harm. Creeds and teachings 
in the past have inculcated fear in man (the fear 
of evil has produced the effect of evil) and it is 
time man should assert his Godhead. 

Faith in God and the justice of his laws will work 
great results for good, and ever remember that even 
Christ in his native country could do no great works 
because of the lack of faith of the people. Worry is 
the tyranny of one idea, to the exclusion of others, 
probably the worst form of tyranny known, for it is 
ever with us. It develops one group of brain cells 
to the exclusion of all others, which latter finally 
become congested because of the excessive flow of 
blood to the one cell group depriving them of 
proper nourishment. Finally the weakest cells in 
the group, their walls by constant pressure and over 
action becoming thin, eventually burst and a clot 
of blood on the brain follows and death or insanity 
results when carried to an extreme. But being only 
a state of mind after all, it is only a condition and 
therefore must yield to the existing positive forces 
for good, scientists say. 

Science has ever been backward in demonstrat- 
ing anything on the unseen plane.* She has tried 

* We do not experience the weight of fifteen pounds to the 
square inch of our body nor do we see any signs of the 
power that draws up to the heavens enough water yearly 



Man — God's Masterpiece 207 

to confine herself to the plane of the physical senses, 
but now she has been forced of late years to take 
cognizance of the unseen. Joseph LeConte says : 
*' The forces of nature light, electricity, magne- 
tism, etc., are naught else than different forms of 
one omnipresent divine energy.'' * As a result of 
our studies we have to realize that there are many 
things in nature our senses do not cognize, yet 
which exist, as the force of gravity, the air's pres- 
sure, the motion of the earth, etc. It follows that 
there are probably many others existing and exert- 
ing their influence which we are ignorant of, especi- 
ally those of a spiritual nature. The old scientific 
argument ^' I cannot cognize, therefore I deny," be- 
comes absurd. 

This is the particular duty of science — to prove 
the existence of forces and things we know not 
of — to prove to us the unreliability of our senses, 
she is meeting theology half-way and is fast sup- 
to cover the surface of the world. Neither do we take 
any recognition of the power, Prof. Clark of Amhurst 
College says, equal to 1% tons, that is at work in one 
pulpy squash, nor of the sunshine shining on the deck 
of the largest vessel, generating enough power to run it 
easily, nor that which shines on Manhattan Island on a 
sunny day, sufficient to drive all the steam engines of the 
world. Signs of the Times, June, 1915. We think that 
iron and stone are colder than wood whereas they are 
merely better conductors of heat, etc. 

♦ Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought, p. 
299. " Do not I fill heaven and earth? " said Jehovah. 



2o8 Man — God's Masterpiece 

plying the proof that the preacher has hereto- 
fore needed to make his arguments convincing. 
She is, as well, separating the true from the 
false in theology. When she has finished, and 
not until then, will the preacher be able to ad- 
vance arguments which will be absolutely con- 
vincing. The theologian has ever preached the 
existence of a soul and an all-powerful God, both 
of which the advanced scientist of to-day is gradu- 
ally being forced to admit, so these two finally 
meet on common ground and the conflict is fast 
ending between the liberal minister and the ad- 
vanced scientist. 

Sir Oliver Lodge says : " Science is beginning to 
suspect the existence of a larger transcendental in- 
dividuality with which men of genius are in touch 
more than ordinary men." ^' The conflict of the 
ages has been the conflict between the received re- 
ligion and the tendency of civilization. The saviors 
of the world, one and all, have sufifered martydrom 
at the bloody hands of religion." * 

Darwin says : '' The organic world owed its 
animation and quickening to progressive develop- 
ment as against the theologian's dogma of special 
miraculous creation of species." Because of the 
proof they brought to bear against the miraculous 
creative dogma of the theologian many thought 

♦ The Non-Religion of Man, etc., by Tuttle, 



Man — God's Masterpiece 209 

they had eliminated God from the universe, whereas 
further discoveries made along this line by scien- 
tific believers in the theory furnished the strong- 
est proof yet of the creation of the world by 
an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent power 
whom they are gradually agreeing with the theo- 
logian should be called God. The very fact of 
organic and mental evolution with all its wondrous 
workings points to a divine origin of mind and 
life on this earth.* 

It is the duty of science to prove the existence 
of things and their material causation, while it is 
the part of religion to be philosophical and dis- 
cover their meaning. Working along these lines 
Science and Religion should supplement not an- 
tagonize each other. " Science has found a way 
through Psychology to God and is God made 
manifest and college professors are teaching that 
man is the embodiment and conscious expression 
of the force that guides all life and holds all matter 
in its course." f '' Genuine religion must be sci- 
entific for science is true religion; for all true 
knowledge is divine, so true science is religious." % 

'' Materialism so far as the teaching of the col- 
leges is concerned is a thing of the past. It is 
believed by many profesors that through agnoticism 

* Evolution of the Human Soul, Andersen. 

t Progress Magazine, September, 1909. 

t Newcomb's " All is right with the world." 



210 Man — God's Masterpiece 

the world has finally arrived at the borderland of a 
spiritual domain, infinitely more beautiful than that 
exploited by the church. The present issue is no 
longer, the schoolmen say, between science and re- 
ligion, but between scholastic faith and atiquated 
creeds." * 

No one has ever seen the death or destruction of 
a single thing in nature ; it has always been simply a 
change in form. Froebel says : " Throughout the 
whole of nature, there is nothing but continually 
repeated resurrection." Frohman's last words after 
the Lusitania had been torpedoed were, " death is 
but a beautiful adventure." No autumn ever 
passed submerged in winter but has seen its res- 
urrection. The wild flowers that perish in the 
frosts ever come to life again in the spring. Nature 
shows nothing in a permanent state of repose, it is 
always action up or down, and what seems like re- 
pose is only temporary and presages a change. 
" Nothing is permanent but change." The very 
conditions of life are such as to presuppose death, 
the same conditions which build up one organiza- 
tion compel the destruction of another. The very 
process of decay is a manifestation of life. There 
is no sleep or grave so deep that can hold a human 
soul. Victor Hugo says : '' The tomb is not a 
blind alley, it is a thoroughfare, it closes in the 

♦Harold Bolce, Cosmopolitan Magazine, August, 1909. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 211 

twilight to open with the dawn." It is but a phase 
of Hfe and hfe exists for eternity, a stage in our 
progressive development. If death ended all, then 
would life be an unfinished tale, a plan without a 
purpose. 

Primitive man needed the fear of death before 
him ever in order to survive, as do many now. 
But as we advance and learn of the beauty and 
usefulness of life and the utter futility in trying 
to evade its experiences, its usefulness will have 
passed away and we shall see it as it is, the entrance 
to a grander, fuller life, to be welcomed when the 
proper time comes. Why not then w^ear white as 
did the old Romans,"*" the Spartans and the Chinese, 
emblematic of their friends' entrance into paradise 
in shining robes. The modern Jew has advanced 
beyond us in this respect. He calls his burying- 
place '' Beth Hachaimor " or " House of the Liv- 
ing." t 

If it were not for death, the world by this 

* The Romans, the tipper classes were more advanced 
than we have thought. Professor C. M. Cobern, Archaeolo- 
gist of the Alleghany College, Peru, says : *' In the year 
Six, Nero established an income tax levied against every 
one having an income of over Four Thousand dollars a 
year. There were trusts and banks then, and they failed 
sometimes. In Nero's palace at Rome they dug up three 
elevators. Criminals were turned over to the surgeons; 
shorthand was in use about the time of Jesus," etc. 

t Mystery of Grief, p. 116 Bolton HaU. 



212 Man — God's Masterpiece 

time would have been overpopulated. There would 
have been no room for us or any of our little 
ones. It is very possible that we may even actually 
control death and it may become in time a voluntary 
flitting on our part, at the proper time. So also as 
we have never seen the ending, we have never seen 
the beginning of anything, only a metamorphosis, 
like that of the grub into the butterfly. The seed 
sown grows up into the plant, the plant in time be- 
gets a seed, but the first seed sown was only a 
change. The plant took the necessary constituents 
from the soil and the air, and begot a new combina- 
tion. 

So because the body undergoes a change at death, 
being simply an instrument used by the soul, there 
is no reason from which to predicate that the 
soul is dead or has changed. It is simply a cessa- 
tion of material expression by the spirit, a rebirth 
into another and higher life."^ The kinship of sleep 
and death has been often mentioned. We call our 
graveyards cemeteries or sleeping-places and in 
Israel it was said he slept with his fathers. 

Natural death is unknown amongst the lowest 
forms of life, like the amoeba, which continuously 
divides and subdivides, this being so, why should 

♦ '' And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; 
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor cry- 
ing, neither shall there be any more pain : for the former 
things are passed away.** Rev. 21:4. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 213 

death be introduced among the higher forms? 
surely not as a punishment for advancement. It 
therefore must serve some wise purpose, and what 
better than as an entrance into a higher Hfe? 

Death will lose its sting and the grave its victory 
when the spirit has developed in us clairaudience 
and clairvoyance sufficiently so that we can see the 
spirit world and commune with it. We will then 
refuse to believe the testimony of our senses, know- 
ing how defective they are and will see the truth 
for ourselves from a spiritual standpoint. 

Reason tells us that our relations with our Maker 
are too important to be terminated so abruptly. The 
voice of God within says it must be true, and science 
ratifies it by informing us that nothing can be de- 
stroyed, and our sense of justice demands another 
chance for those who have suffered or failed to 
make good. 

The Psychical Research Society, of w^hich some 
of our most advanced scientists are members ad- 
mit the existence of clairaudience and clairvoy- 
ance and of communication with the dead in very 
rare instances. Suffering will have passed away 
and the tears that accompany it when its mis- 
sion of guiding us to the right path shall have 
ceased. Christ says : '' Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, if a man keep my sayings he shall never see 
death.'' The Norseman spoke of a man dead as 



214 Man — God's Masterpiece 

having '' gone home." * '' Death is non-existent 
except to the eye of sense/' '' All death in nature 
is birth." '' Death and birth are but the struggle 
of life with itself to assume a more glorious and 
congenial form." Fichte. It is the casting ofif of a 
crude form of expression for one which is more 
perfect and therefore it is not death, but fuller 
Hfe, a rebirth. A few deep thinkers like Edison 
are commencing to believe that death as we know 
it is not necessary but that life later on may be pro- 
longed here indefinitely. Professor Dolbear says: 
" I think we are very near to a discovery of a 
scientific basis of immortality that will transform 
most of our thinking." Professor A. J. DuBois of 
Yale believes that the discovery has already been 
made.f 

* Appolonius of Tyana, in a letter believed to be au- 
thentic says: (Occult Review, April, 1905) "There is no 
death of any one but only in appearance even as there is 
no birth of any save only in seeming. The change from 
being to becoming seems to be birth, and the change from 
becoming to being seems to be death. It is simply in being 
visible or invisible, the former through the density of 
matter and the latter because of the subtlety of being, 
and being is ever the same, its change being motion and 
rest. . . It is the way of everything here in the world 
below that when it is filled out with matter it is visible, 
owing to the resistence of its density, but it is invisible 
owing to its subtlety when it is rid of matter; the matter 
still surrounds it and flows through it in that immensity of 
space which hems it in, but knows no birth or death." 

t Science and Immortality — from Don't Worry, by Theo. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 215 

Unanswered prayers (if proper) there are none, 
but answered as we desire they generally are not. 
The same God that allowed the burden made the 
back. Most of our prayers are foolish* or would 
work out an injury by interfering with the divine 
plan. God answers the call of the spirit, not of the 
flesh; hence our many disappointments, for mostly 
we desire things material or the welfare of some 
beloved one whose salvation God is working out 
along lines of suffering, perhaps. 

We specialize in prayer, whereas God works out 
our salvation on broad lines of his own, and here 
our faith must come in, and if we differ we must 
realize from past experiences that his plan is best. 
Longing for the companionship of our fellow-man, 
his love and sympathy, makes us better qualified 
to appreciate these blessings when we acquire them. 
Thru suffering we learn the lesson of patience and 
only then can we know what good health means — 
the blessings of it. 

How can we be sympathetic unless in some 
previous period we have longed most earnestly for 
sympathy and have suffered for the lack of it, or 

F. Seward. See also latest Report of Psychical Research 
Society. 

* Jean Ingelow says : *' I have lived long enough to thank 
God that all my prayers have not been answered." " The 
most manifest Sign of Wisdom " said Montaigne, " is con- 
tinued cheerfulness." 



2i6 Man — God's Masterpiece 

perhaps from some harsh judgment passed upon us. 
The halt and the bHnd will for ages rejoice in see- 
ing and in unimpeded locomotion, even though the 
conscious mind in the next evolution should not re- 
member its sufferings here. Yet will the subcon- 
scious, knowing everything, rejoice for all time? 

An omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving God will 
not and cannot put us thru any experience that is 
retrogressive or unnecessary. He would not be om- 
niscient, omnipotent if he did. Christ again and 
again emphasized the fact that we must have faith 
'* as your faith, be it unto you." Faith is the most 
potent form of attraction, the mother of achieve- 
ment. It brings out the best in you and the best in 
those around you. Desire, faith, and work are the 
trinity that bring results. 

Demand is the scientific basis of prayer; there- 
fore, do not abjectly supplicate. We must comply 
with his conditions (laws) first, if we would re- 
ceive in accordance with our desires, and all these 
conditions emphasize the great law of progress, of 
which we must never lose sight, and especially must 
we not become self -centered and so lose our identity 
with the whole, or progression ceases and a hellish 
condition sets in.* 

* God makes universal laws with which the individual 
must place himself in harmony. (Chinese view of prayer). 
St. Paul says : " Faith is the substance of things hoped 
for." Under the law, if sufficiently strong it attracts the 
thing desired. 



CHAPTER XIII 

In studying economic, industrial, and religious 
history one is forcibly struck by the fact that great 
truths, even though they may have dawned upon 
the world centuries ago, were never appreciated 
and were never appropriated into their daily life 
until the people had reached a degree of intelligence 
where they needed these truths and were fitted to 
receive and utilize them. Under the workings of 
the law, the same law that governs demand and sup- 
ply, came the means of gratifying the desire, show- 
ing that the Power that rules the universe stood and 
ever stands ready and even anxious ( for, we repeat, 
the greater desires harmony with its parts) to 
gratify all reasonable desires. And, however fast 
these desires increase, the call upon him is always 
cheerfully responded to and always more bounti- 
fully than we ever thought of demanding, pointing 
plainly to an inexhaustible demand and supply in 
the future. The Father is ever anxious for the 
welfare of his child. 

The keynote thruout all is ^' Seek and ye shall 

217 



2i8 Man — God's Masterpiece 

find/' '* be worthy and it is yours," * and that God is 
evidently giving a part of himself. 

" All things are thine estate ; yet must 
Thou first display the title deeds, 
And sue the world, be strong and trust 
High instincts more than all the creeds." 

Lord Lytton. 

As we need them and can assimilate them and 
make them part of our life, the advanced minds 
among us go into God's great storehouse, now 
opened wide to us (practically in the Nineteenth 
Century) and bring out great discoveries,! which 
have been waiting from all time for a race suffi- 
ciently advanced to know how to utilize them. And 
in this same storehouse are endless other beautiful 
and wonderful things waiting for man to claim his 
ownership. The storehouse is inexhaustible, for as 
we progress forever our circumstances changing 
with our plane of advancement, so we shall ever 
be making new demands ; and there is no limitation 
to God, his powers, or his possessions of which 
we are the heirs. " God is my Father. He has 

* " If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall 
ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." John 
15:7. 

t " Human knowledge will be erased from the archive 
of the world before we possess the last word that the gnat 
has to say to us." Henri Fabre. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 219 

wealth untold, His wealth is mine, health, happi- 
ness and gold/' * '* For there is nothing hid which 
shall not be manifested; neither was anything kept 
secret but that it should come abroad." f Professor 
Crooks, in Popular Science Monthly, says that a 
single foot of ether locks up ten thousand foot 
tons of energy some day to be utilized by man. 
And in this storehouse also will be found the key 
to perpetual health as well. 

Christ said : '' Thy faith hath made thee whole." 
All his healings were based on the inherent powers 
in man to cure himself (and he will always lack 
something of the qualities of a God until he can 
do this) and faith only was needed to bring these 
vital forces into action. Physical disease is ex- 
ternalized evidence of a want of spiritual harmony 
with the source of our being — the whole — a viola- 
tion of the law. Medicine supplies to a certain ex- 
tent the element of faith while nature works the 
cure. 

Man is a veritable Trinity X the flesh, the intel- 
lect, and the spirit — and these must necessarily work 
in harmony, being parts of one whole or disastrous 

* Ella Wheeler Wilcox. '' Industrialism as it changes, 
betters human environment, and is the true civilizing 
agent.'* Elbert Hubbard. 

tMark 4:22. 

t All ancient philosophers, both christian and pagan, be- 
lieve in a Trinity. Riddle of the Universe, p. 27, by 
Ernest Haeckel. 



220 Man— ^God's Masterpiece 

results will follow (and his life is expressed by 
birth, progress and death. ) " It is evident from the 
history of the healing art, that the science was one 
originally of pure suggestion." We now call it 
suggestive therapeutics. Even to this day in India 
the Priest (who is supposed to be nearest the 
deity) mutters words over strings and amulets and 
fastens them about the neck, waist, or wrists of 
those complaining of disease or sickness. From 
strings and amulets, the incantations and mutter- 
ings were made over something the patient ate or 
drank, and still later specialized preparations were 
made over which incantations and mysterious words 
were uttered. 

Later, roots, herbs, and concoctions were pre- 
pared for different afflictions, all the while they 
were preparing them, enchantments were uttered 
or sung over them. As time passed and the 
number and variety of medicinal preparations in- 
creased, no account was taken of man's innate 
vitality, nature was considered a weakling and 
the faith seems to have been transferred from the 
enchanter to the drug or preparation itself, and 
the virtue is now supposed to reside in the medicine 
itself. 

" Toward the latter part of the middle ages 
the alchemists despaired of transmuting baser met- 
als into gold and started in searching for the 
elixir of life, and from this grew the discovery of 



Man — God's Masterpiece 221 

manufacture of modern drugs." Haeckel, in the 
Riddle of the Universe * says, that down to the mid- 
dle of the Nineteenth Century the nature of dis- 
eases were sought for in supernatural and mystical 
causes until Vichow introduced his cellular forma- 
tion of disease. We are now coming to understand 
the power of suggestion and to realize that the only 
reliable agency for the relief of all human ailments 
is the power inherent in man himself and that by 
awakening and developing the latent powers within 
us, we are able to rid ourselves of disease in all its 
forms/' t " Before the Reformation the monks 

* pp. 49 and 50. 

t Eternal Progress, December, 1908 : The foUowing are 
taken from Mind, Health, and Religion, by R. MacDonald: 
Dr. Fleury says : " The modern Doctor must understand 
the pathology and hygiene of the intellect. But the fields 
of psycho-physiology and psycho-therapeutics are as yet 
almost untouched." Sir George Paget claims that in many 
eases cancer has its origin in prolonged anxiety. Dr. 
Snow, Dr. Murchinson, and Sir. W. H. Bennet, of St. 
George's Hospital, London, all agree that often cancer of 
the liver, the breast and the uterus are due to mental anx- 
iety. Dr. DuBois of Germany says: "Can we by means 
of the mind, by our moral deportment, escape illness, pre- 
vent functional troubles, diminish or suppress those which 
already exist? I answer boldly, *' Yes." Doctors John 
Hunter and Johann Mueller state that any mental state 
may be induced in any part of the body by constant atten- 
tion. Dr. Schofield of the British Medical Association 
says: "The wise physician must grasp the underlying 
unity of the spiritual and material and recognize thai: V" 



222 Man — God's Masterpiece 

were the only medical practitioners and the mon- 
asteries the only hospitals (and the only refuge for 
the decrepid and aged as well). After that in Eng- 
land, barbers, farmers, butchers, blacksmiths and 
old women practiced/' * " And as ye go, preach, 
saying The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal 
the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out 
devils, freely ye have received, freely give.'' f The 
psalms reiterate that wholeness is the natural re- 
sult of abiding in God. The wise physician % is 
reverting to the early teachings of medicine as rep- 
resented by the faith curer, the witch doctor, and 
the like, and is looking less to the body and more to 
the mind for the cause of disease, for evidence 

the body may and does influence diseases of the soul, so 
does the mind influence states and diseases of the body." 
The eminent Dr. Laycock claims the most eminent and 
successful physicians have all been true psychologists, 
for the knowledge of a practical science of the mind is 
fundamentally necessary to a practice of medicine. Dr. 
Matthew says: "A large portion of all diseases are due 
directly or indirectly to thought." Prof. Gardiner, Presi- 
dent of the British Medical Association, says : " We must 
acknowledge that the spiritual element in man is brought 
necessarily into the sphere of the physician's work." Sir 
B. W. Richardson claims that diabetes is undoubtedly 
caused by mental strain." 

* First lines of Therapeutics, Harvey, pp. 78-80. 

tMatt. 10:7, 8. 

J Voltaire defined the practice of medicine as "putting 
medicine of which we know little into a body of which 
:we know nothing." 



Man — God's Masterpiece 223 

shows more and more that the body is acted upon 
by the spirit to a great extent. 

Hahnemann claimed that disease and the proper 
remedies were spiritual.* Harold Bolce says he 
** was amazed to find the profoundest scholars 
in our universities lending their philosophic inter- 
pretations of life's enigma to the widespread con- 
temporary movements that declare that disease of 
the body and distress of the mind and much pov- 
erty must pass away when man understands the 
laws of health and infinite supply. The men who 
a year or two ago would have been deemed dream- 
ers, in expressing a doctrine that God's spirit can 
be examined and taught scientifically, insist that 
this is among the most practical of courses since it 
may assure the student health, etc.'' 

If every atom of the body is the result of thought 
and each contains a mind as before stated, it follows 
that the atomic minds are amenable to thought and 
therefore the whole body; and further, if thought 
is the creator, why is it not the proper one to cure, 
to readjust anything out of order? If we are gods, 
part of God, the Creator and Ruler of all, why can 
we not exercise the powers he uses, the power to 
cure, which no one will deny him? 

If every atom of the human body contains a 
mind, and these cells for ages have been impressed 

* Cosmic World, October, 1909. 



224 Man — God's Masterpiece 

with fear, it is no wonder that the babe takes 
on disease even though its mind is not yet suffi- 
ciently awakened to understand and that it re- 
sponds unconsciously to the medicine administered 
by the physician. Prof. Tyndall says " An em- 
inent friend of mine often speaks of the mistakes 
of those who regard man's ailments as purely chemi- 
cal, to be met by chemical remedies only. He 
contends for the psychological element of cure 
(mind cure) : the influence rained from ladies' eyes 
enables my friend to thrive on dishes which would 
kill him if eaten alone. A sanative effect of the 
same order I experienced, amid the thunder and 
spray of Niagara." 

Henry Wood says, ''If bodily harmony or in- 
harmony be the natural and direct result of the past 
prevailing quality of thought, it is at once evident 
that the only normal or scientific healing agency is 
resident in mentality for we must address ourselves 
to the cause. So modern materia medica lacks an 
exact and scientific basis, for its logical assumption 
is fallacious for the soul is not a function of 
the body, as its philosophy practically takes for 
granted." 

Our receptivity is the real cause of our sickness 
and any germs, draughts, etc., are only the occa- 
sion, for otherwise all exposed would partake of the 
game sickness. It is our fears that in a great meas- 



Man — God's Masterpiece 225 

ure give drugs their present importance and induce 
us to call in the services of the doctor. 

If mind created body, it can ultimately cure it. 
Healing is simply a cessation of a state of friction. 
" Disease is but a modification of some natural or 
some normal action or function/' * '^ Diseases are 
truly natural, though not normal conditions of the 
animal body, and they are formed, maintained, and 
constituted by the same vital powers v^hich regulate 
and constitute the ordinary conditions of health/' f 
It is only the vital forces that can cure. Medicines 
are but modifiers of morbid condition. J Dr. Burton 
of London says : '' The great aim which the medical 
man places before himself is the cure of disease. 
Unfortunately, however, a direct cure at all events 
a direct cure by means of drugs, is in a great ma- 
jority of cases totally impossible." § " The living 
organism is its own healer and it is itself adequate 
to the cure of all curable diseases," || (If this were 
not so the people who could not get at physicians 
would die) by a proper readjustment, from which 
comes a restoration of harmonious action between 
the spirit and its body. 

♦ First Lines of Therapeutics, p. 115, Harvey. 
t Of Nature and Art in the Cure of Diseases, Sir John 
Forbes. 

t See Drs. Alison and Grubber. 

§ First Lines of Therapeutics, p. 158, Harvey. 

II Ibid, p. 30. 



226 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Mere mental functioning does not cure disease, 
it is the spirit that heals — the life principle, Hahne- 
mann calls it — but the mind is the medium that 
brings it into action. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, ad- 
dressing the Denver County Medical Association, 
says : '* Throw off your cloak of mystery and be- 
come one of the people. Some day perhaps every 
learned profession except teaching and agriculture 
will have been banished.'' Dr. Osier in the Ency- 
clopedia Americana, says : '' The basis of the en- 
tire profession of medicine is faith in the doctor 
and his methods." Dr. E. F. Fish, in Wisconsin 
Medical Recorder, says : " To-day the practice of 
medicine is truly a hodge podge. We all recognize 
that a large percentage of our work is empiric, often 
amounting to actual dishonesty.'' George Herbert 
says : " God healeth but the physician has the 
thanks." Hippocrates held that '' our natures are 
our physicians." " It is God that healeth our dis- 
eases." * Sir William Hamilton's question became 
famous. — " Has medicine made a single step since 
Hippocrates ? " " The powers and provisions of art 
(medicine) must be so far of a subordinate kind — 
far more subordinate than is commonly supposed." f 
" The office of medicine is only an auxilliary to na- 
ture." % Scientists say health consists in harmonious 

* Psalm 103. 

t First Lines of Therapeutics, p. 272, Harvey. 

$Ibid, p. 277. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 227 

vibrations and disease in inharmonious ones. Good 
thoughts are constructive, bad thoughts destructive 
to heahh." *' For ages suggestion was the only 
therapeutic agent known to mankind." * And the 
practice of modern medicine began originally with 
suggestion as we have stated. Christ said '' These 
signs shall follow them that believe; in my name 
shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with 
new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if 
they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; 
they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall re- 
cover/' t 

That our present system of healing is defective 
is shown by a report J of the New York City Hos- 
pitals Committee to the Board of Aldermen to the 
effect that nearly one-half of the clinical diagnoses 
made in Bellevue Hospital were not confirmed by 
subsequent autopsies. And this report made by 
those who were friendly to the doctors and there- 
fore probably not as bad as facts warranted. If 
this is as near to it as our best physicians can aim 
what is the percentage in private practice ? As the 
brain power of the individual develops the duties 
that he delegated to the priest and the doctor, to 
think and act for him, he will gradually recall and 

* Hudson. 

t Mark 16:17-18. 

t Summer of 1914. 



228 Man — God's Masterpiece 

do his own religious thinking and be his own doctor 
ultimately. 

We are the embodiment of ages of sinning,* and 
fearing and drinking as well (drunkenness was very 
prevalent in the olden days) and the wonder is that 
we have not inherited more of evil and our bodies 
more frailties, f We would have done so were it 
not the law that good is all-powerful and evil only 
a condition to pass away when we accept the true 
interpretation of our relationship with God (good). 
Thomas A. Edison says that the doctor of the future 
will give no medicine : " This is the great error of 
our day in the treatment of the human body that 
physicians separate the soul from the body." J 
" Naturalists declare that the venom of the ser- 
pents is generated by anger and fear, and it is sup- 
posed that the same process takes place in the human 
body but that we have no especial organ to receive 
it and it therefore disperses itself through the 
blood, acting against ourselves instead of for our 
protection." 

* At one time venereal diseases, plagues, etc., were gen- 
eral and utterly uncontrollable. 

t In some old English country homes they say still 
may be seen a ring let into the wall of the dining room in 
which was put the arm of a man who could not or would 
not drink his alloted share and he was given the choice 
of drinking more or if he refused or could not, the liquor 
was poured down his sleeve, hence the old medieval jest 
of "leaving's sleeving." London Chronicle. 

J Plato. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 229 

Herbert Spencer intimated that fear, anger and 
worry actually cause a destruction of tissue and 
bring about pathological changes in the cell struc- 
ture of the brain. 

The age of competition is passing away. It was 
necessary to develop our individuality under past 
conditions but co-operation is taking its place, due 
to the fact that we have now reached that stage of 
civilization where we recognize that we are bound 
up in the good of each other. This, in time, will 
give place to a higher stage of development, when 
we will recognize that the road to happiness and 
self -advancement lies through forgetfulness of self 
and absorption in others. Then emulation will take 
the place of co-operation and heaven will reign on 
earth — all due to the working out of the law which 
is love ; and this in turn we recognize as God. 

Friction which is at the basis of all wrong-doing, 
of all sorrow, will then have passed away when love 
comes to her own. The masses then will have be- 
come so advanced spiritually, that money will per- 
haps cease as a medium of exchange, as every one 
will work for his fellow-man and will freely give and 
freely take. But these changes take time — so long 
that centuries are accounted as but yesterday. Man 
is in the making still; if we had been made perfect 
in the first place, we would never have known the 
joy of acquiring knowledge through hard work and 
the pleasure of overcoming obstacles. With per- 



230 Man — God's Masterpiece 

fection would come stagnation and then finally re- 
trogression, for such is the law. Spiritually we are 
all equal, but it is the mental expression that makes 
the difference between the dunce and the scholar. 



CHAPTER XIV 

We will now as briefly as possible summarize 
what has been stated in this book and embraced in 
the new interpretations of religion, backed up, as 
we have seen, by science, philosophy, and the teach- 
ings of the Bible. 

Everything is one thing and that thing is God; 
and man is the highest manifestation of God on 
earth. He has all God's powders together with his 
glorious future, and happiness beyond human con- 
ception is his heritage when he has earned it by 
hard work and compliance with the law. He is 
here for the development of eternal values which 
we call character, which has ever been hammered 
out on the anvil of adversity,* and to bring out 
the God within and thus obtain mastery over sur- 
rounding conditions and so glorify the Father who 
ever seeks expression through him. We are part 
of God, and therefore the spirit within is the in- 

* Character is evolved only through suffering, labor and 
education, which must in time eradicate anger, worry and 
selfishness, ere the goal is reached and the man acts in 
unison with his Maker. 

231 



232 Man — God's Masterpiece 

dwelling God, ever present and ready to answer our 
call and to give more than we ask.* 

If part of God, then our destiny is God's, so why 
worry and take on care if we try hard to comply with 
his laws, for ultimately we must realize the happiness 
of the Supreme — ^be supremely happy. God does not 
expect us to do our best, for that exists only in the 
ideal, but to make honest, persistent efforts to do 
better and better as the years roll by. Only by 
following out his will, can we secure happiness, for 
if God and Good are synonyms we can only attain 
it by developing the Good (God) within. The part 
must, under the law, agree with the whole or there 
is friction. 

It is this friction that creates a hellish state, 
whereas harmony arising from proper adjustment; 
creates in the individual a heavenly condition.f 
Therefore Heaven and Hell are not locations but 
states of mind, the results of compliance or non- 
compliance with the law. God and his works being 
good, he has no occasion for a localized hell. 

If we would be happy, we must seek out the law 
and follow it, and this law is the law of love; J 

* " But the trailing clouds of glory do we come. From 
God who is our Home." Wadsworth. 

t How smoothly the machinery of a great Atlantic liner 
runs; how quiet, yet were a small spike to be dropped in a 
certain part of it, what discord, damage, and danger would 
instantly ensue. 

t So many of us are eminently respectable here, yet I 



Man — God's Masterpiece 233 

therefore, we must seek out God and give ourselves 
wholly to good (God).* We can find Him by 
listening to the voice of conscience, which is the 
divine urge from within. This may be a very im- 
perfect guide at first, especially to the selfish man but 
it will grow more accurate with user. You are im- 
mortal; also you have to progress there, why not 
now? The past has gone forever; the future you 
will never see, now, the eternal now stares you in 
the face and demands immediate action. Submit 
to the inevitable and move on, for there only lies 
happiness, the spiritual is the only asset worth 
while. 

The definition of God in Hebrew is good and as 
everything is God or Good, there can be no devil, 
for it would be absurd in God to create a force 
simply to oppose Himself. Evil is simply a state 
of friction growing out of the antagonism arising 
between self love and our duty to others taking place 
in a higher stage of evolution, a condition merely, 
and will pass away when the law is complied with, 
and harmony restored through a proper adjustment. 

Man, therefore, being of God, is inherently good, 

am afraid in heaven will turn out to be but whitened 
sepulchres. 

* Love all of us have, far more than we think for, 
for we are of God and God is love. But so many lack the 
power or will to give expression to it. The sins of omis- 
sion far exceed those of commission. 



234 Man — God's Masterpiece 

and the evil that he works will disappear in time, 
and the true man, the God man, will stand forth. 
As God is perfect, and as His laws allowed sin and 
suffering, it must be for some wise purpose. 

I repeat, all morality, all religion, is a growth, 
and in the earliest stages of mankind we find that 
self-preservation at any cost was the law of nature; 
that under the workings of this law man did things 
which from our present higher plane of develop- 
ment we call sin and must suppress, but that it was 
really a lower form of good originally and now has 
become anti-social, or bad as we call it, relatively, 
we having advanced beyond it. For man, having 
become a social being, must recognize what is best 
for the whole and comply with the laws governing 
his changed conditions. The time has come now 
when we must substitute fraternity for antagonism 
in our relations with our fellow-man. 

Even the so-called criminal * is acquiring valu- 
able experience and his life is not a failure, for God 
can create no failure; but under the law of con- 
trast, having gone into the depths, he will better 
appreciate the higher planes of evolution when he 
reaches them. " John and Peter, Robert and Paul ; 
God in his wisdom created them all.'' f It is in- 

* Remember there is a potential ancestry in us all, with 
its strain of monkey, tiger, and lamb. So most boys have 
their cruel age, and most girls their spiteful catlike period. 

t"Art thou a pigmy? courage, soul! For thee, as all, 
the Kingly goal. '' F. C. Haddock. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 235 

conceivable that an all-wise, all-powerful God 
should create an imperfect object and place him here 
to suffer for a condition for which he is respon- 
sible. It is far simpler for us to take a broader 
view than this present life submits to us, to look 
down the ages, and, beholding the steady advance- 
ment, realize that all His handiwork is a success. 

Since our source is in God, God is our Father, 
and He being Spirit, we are spirit, and man is our 
brother, and we must recognize and fulfil our obli- 
gations as son and brother. Man, however low in 
the criminal stage, (so-called), is still our brother 
and is of God and Good, and it is our duty to de- 
velop this good in him. 

Suffering is a remedial agent and necessary on 
certain planes only, for it warns of violation of 
the law, whether through ignorance or intent, and 
it begets such a disagreeable condition that we de- 
sire to end it, and so seek out the remedy, which 
is compliance with the law. Under the law of con- 
trast, it also produces a far greater capacity for 
future happiness. We pray that this or that cross 
be removed from over weary shoulders, and so by 
emphasizing it increase the burden of it, instead of 
asking for strength to bear and overcome it. Yet, 
if wise, we send our children to school and later on 
out into the world to rough it and so acquire valu- 
able experience, without which there is no charac- 
ter. What can the molly coddled child ever learn 



236 Man — God's Masterpiece 

of life? It is the bitter experiences that give us 
the clearest insight into life and its meanings. Wis- 
dom often is but the dregs of folly. How frequently 
a foolish misspent night has exposed to us the evils 
besetting the primrose path. How many have to go 
to the bottom of the wine cup to find out what 
life really means in certain stages of their evolu- 
tion. 

Were it not for this sentinel suffering, we 
might forever wander astray and never reach our 
destination, which is heaven, and so defeat the 
plans of God for our welfare. But this stage of 
our evolution is passing away and soon sin and 
suffering will be a thing of the past, how soon, it is 
for us to decide. Under the light of the new in- 
terpretation, we find the answer to many questions 
that for ages we have asked in vain, being unable 
then to understand because of our prejudices, our 
savagery and ignorance. But all are not yet an- 
swered, nor is it surprising when we realize our 
present intellectual and moral status.* Is it not 
natural to suppose that every question has its an- 
swer and that these same questions will be an- 
swered satisfactorily, as so many have been in the 
past, as we advance and still newer and wiser inter- 

*When at Murphysboro, 111., four thousand applications 
and over were made, many of the applicants women, to wit- 
ness the hanging of one Joe Derberry for murder. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 237 

pretations arise, of these at present puzzling ques- 
tions ? 

Man, being a spirit, his true destiny, happiness, 
lies through developing the spirit, the unfoldment 
of the spiritual consciousness, and not the flesh at 
the cost of the spirit. The lower nature must come 
under control of the higher spiritual self and not 
until then will your greatest happiness come to you. 
You will then be asking from your soul and be 
asking what is right, not as now, from the mind, 
mostly governed as it is by your fears and desires. 

Material joys, material things may be an aid but 
never should be considered the end, or unhappiness 
results, for the day is fast coming when intellect 
will take precedence of money, and conduct be 
ranked above all.* As spirits we only truly assim- 
ilate and at death take with us spiritual things. 

Equal to the best who have ever lived we some 
day must become, even such as Jesus Christ. We 
are gods in embryo and our life here is but a school- 
ing to enable us to live up to the exalted position of 
gods in the distant future. The fatherhood of 
God; the brotherhood of man; the indwelling God 
to guide us; and the goldly destiny of man the 
spirit, allied as he is to the Father — all this holds 
forth hope and future happiness, a glorious future 
to each and all of us and a far happier condition 

* Andrew Carnegie. 



238 Man — God's Masterpiece 

here if we will strive for it. It but depends upon 
our own efforts how fast we shall progress. This 
is the new interpretation given to nature and the 
Scriptures. 

A few words of cheer to the sinner and the suf- 
ferer and we close. To learn to smile through 
your tears, to yield to the chastening rod and bless 
it, to do your daily duties cheerfully, however hum- 
ble, believing that all will be right in the end, to 
learn the lesson of endurance, to spread sunshine 
everywhere under all circumstances and to be wil- 
ling and glad that His will not yours be done. To 
play up to the part of a god. That is the lesson of 
life.* Live up to your highest ideals and you have 
done your part, and trust God for carrying out His, 
even though the result is not as you wish. 

If your experiences (most of which is gained 
through suffering) do not lead to advancement, then 
life would be a failure, and the failure would reflect 
on the Creator of all life. Remember this little life 
is only one infinitesimal experience out of the many 
we are to have, and each one, as we progress, with 
less hardship in it, and more joy, the fruitage of 
our past experiences; for what avail is experience, 
if it does not add to happiness. So why be sad if 
we do not accomplish all we hoped for; probably 

*The four sides of your room are prison walls or they 
are the temporary quarters of a god — as you will it — and 
why not now;? 



Man — God's Masterpiece 239 

we have garnered far more than we think for of 
true values ; those that count in our evolution. The 
measure of ultimate values is not a monetary one. 
The stamp of the Godhead is nowhere found on 
the reverse of the mighty dollar. Our brain ca- 
pacity is gradually increasing and being of God our 
memory, our mental powers, and capability for 
work is infinite. As we develop these our field of 
study will increase and the happiness to be derived 
from the study of nature and mankind; unfolding 
as it will to us daily hidden beauties, the source of 
which is love,* will give us infinite pleasure f and the 
exercise of loving qualities will develop the love (the 
God) within, and life will be '' one long glad song,'' 
with no pain or sorrow to interfere, for these will 
then have outlasted their usefulness, when the hu- 
man has ceased to need them as an incentive to 
progress. And this for all time. Is it not worth 
the price paid for it? 

Ignorance, undoubtedly, is the source of most of 
the sin and suffering in this world. " Do you sup- 
pose that I voluntarily fall into evil and miss the 
good? I hope that it may not be so, then what is 
the cause of my wrong doing?" '' Ignorance." J 

* It is reaHy the study of God Himself. 

t For if of God our pleasures must be infinite there 
being no limit to his attributes. 

{Discourses of Epictetus, p. 80. Buckle on Civiliza- 
tion in Europe, Vol. 1, part 1. 



240 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Disease is not a punishment inflicted by an angry 
God but an inevitable consequence following a vio- 
lation of law.* It is but very seldom, if ever, that 
one acts with wilful intent to injure oneself or an- 
other, especially if he knew the consequences. The 
sinner, if he could only be persuaded, that he was 
injuring himself most of all, that he was denying 
himself happiness by his course in life as well as 
trespassing on the rights of others, would un- 
doubtedly try to change his methods, unless he 
were insane. The sufferer as well f if he could 
realize thoroughly that his suffering represented 
the friction arising from ill-adjustment, would seek 
the remedy, which in all cases is compliance with 
the law. "If men are in the wrong, it is because 

♦ The academy of St. Petersburg has received from Tibet, 
a medical work written 1200 years ago, which described 
accurately the anatomy of the human body, its nervous 
system, function of heart, lungs, and liver, and the writer 
says all physical maladies are the result of our ignorance 
and of our incapacity to govern and repress our passions. 
He adds that all evil thoughts act most injuriously on the 
heart and liver. 

fHow can we truly sympathize without previously hav- 
ing become acquainted with grief, and never to have known 
sympathy would deprive us of the sweetest attribute of 
love. Pain eventually must merge into sympathy and 
so become a blessing. "All discord harmony not under- 
stood, all partial evil universal good." Popa " Who 
never ate his bread in sorrow, who never spent the mid- 
night hours, weeping and waiting for the morrow, he 
knows not ye heavenly powers." Goethe. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 241 

they know no better/' Marcus Aurelius. '* If a 
man has done amiss, the mischief is to himself/' 
Marcus AureHus. The sinner cannot do a per- 
manent injury to his victim, for he can't reach his 
spirit. Sin and suffering are only conditions, are 
not active forces, such as you have at your com- 
mand to combat them with. Like darkness, they 
simply represent the absence of light, and will fade 
away the instant the latter appears. " Do not, I beg 
you, dread those things which the immortal gods 
apply to our minds, like spurs, misfortune is virtue's 
opportunity." * "I wrote down my troubles day by 
day. And after a few short years. When I turned to 
the heartaches passed away, And I read them with 
smiles not tears." f Created by God, and being 
a god yourself, the power that created you can 
make you well, purge you of sin and suffering, but 
not without faith and effort on your part. You 
must absolutely believe that these conditions can 
pass away, that they are passing away, as is the 
fact, and that health and happiness is your normal 
condition, your divine heritage. " The habitual 
tendency of all that goes on in the living organism 
is ever in the direction of health." % You must not 
dwell on the bad features, for this only magnifies 
them in your mind and sets their roots deeper, but 

* Seneca. 

t John Boyle O'Reniy. 

t First Lines of Therapeutics, p. 131, Harvey. 



242 Man — God's Masterpiece 

you must emphasize the opposite — you must visual- 
ize * yourself as the true ego really is, well and with- 
out sin, a part of the great whole, an atomic portion 
of God himself, a glorious creation. This may all be 
hard to do and many will not be fully successful 
but the benefit will be great in every case and it can 
be done, and remember, after all that life is but a 
day at school. But above all things do not '' dram- 
atize your woes and go about seeking for a sym- 
pathetic audience " as so many of us do. Remember 
the experience of George Sands who said she sym- 
pathized deeply with her own sorrows until she was 
called out into the world and realized how small 
they were compared to what so many others were 
burdened with. So many of us prefer that our will 
not God's be done and this arouses a state of fric- 
tion from which man is bound to suffer for he is 
necessarily wrong. Take all the pleasure possible in 
the beauties of nature, and the kindly acts of men, 
look for them closely so that the pleasure derived 
may put you in good humor with your surroundings 

* Faith guided by reason is the magic " Sesame '' that 
brings aU this in its train. You must thoroughly realize 
that an all-powerful, all-wise, all-loving Father is at the 
helm guiding your destinies and that all happenings bear 
with them a useful experience and that your destinies is 
God's and you will cast your sorrows and trials aside, 
realizing that all things work together for the ultimate 
good of you and yours. This takes time and much repiti- 
tion but is vastly worth the labor expended. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 243 

and so derive material benefits to your health from 
this condition of harmony. Avoid trouble by re- 
fusing to dwell on it, and the benefits derived from 
these two sources will be surprising. Seek ye the 
law (no easy matter, I admit) and comply with it, 
and all will be well with you. The marvels that 
faith can work have very seldom been demon- 
strated but it must be a great faith, an absolute, 
all-absorbing belief in the God within and his power 
and desire to cure. The reason why so many have 
heretofore failed is because we have neglected for 
ages to exercise this dormant power. If you notice 
the successful cases in life, it invariably has been 
those who have had great faith in themselves or in 
some power back of them. Our spiritual teachers 
have heretofore unfortunately and wrongly stated 
that we were grovelling worms in the presence of 
an angry God. Even so in the time of Epictetus, 
" for they say what am I, a poor miserable man with 
my wretched bit of flesh." * '' But we think of our- 
selves as if we were only stomachs and intestines 
and shameful parts." f So we have only had a 
half-hearted faith at best; avoid doubting or noth- 
ing can be accomplished. Also as a result of these 
teachings, we have for ages believed in the invinci- 
ble power of sin and suffering. We have regarded 
death in our hearts, not as a simple evolutionary 

♦ Epictetus, p. 13. t Ibid, p. 34. 



244 Man — God's Masterpiece 

upward step but as possible annihilation, and it will 
take time to eradicate these ideas from our system, 
the atomic mind of every atom of which as we have 
previously said, they now permeate (this latter is 
the reason why one's faith must be so great that it 
permeates and controls every cell mind). It will 
require many years before the masses will have ex- 
ercised this power sufficiently so that it can become 
a part of their very nature until it assumes abso-^ 
lute control, for faith, like every other faculty, 
must be exercised to become strong and the more we 
exercise it the more powerful it becomes. 

In the meantime there will be those leaders 
amongst us who will show the way and so prove that 
it can be done. Ages of suffering, sorrow, and sin 
entitle mankind to another chance, under better 
conditions, and the infinite kindness and power of 
God is a guarantee that we shall have it. And the 
longing of the spirit for it is another proof that we 
shall enjoy it. If there were not another existence, 
one of rewards and punishments it would be neces- 
sary to assume it for not only would morality 
cease, but life, its tragedies, and happenings, would 
mean nothing, and God's works would be useless and 
HE the greatest incompetent of the ages. Most 
of us are not sufficiently advanced as yet to do a vir- 
tuous act for virtue's sake only, but it will come in 
time when we become more spiritual. 



CHAPTER XV 

To those who try and apparently fail, I would 
say that no honest effort ever could beget a fail- 
ure, but on the contrary is registered to your credit, 
and your character will bear the imperishable evi- 
dence of it, for there the record stands forth of all 
past efforts made, successful or unsuccessful, of 
every thought conceived, as if the history of the 
same were written on parchment. Success is very 
often the fruitage of repeated failures. A little 
thing this, yet really quite an important factor in 
daily life. Do not become too enthusiastic to-day, 
for under the law, a reaction will follow to-mor- 
row; also if blue to-day; remember the reaction 
following will be in your favor. If blue either seek 
diversion in work or seeing friends. Do not in- 
dulge in morbid introspection, the cause of so much 
of our misery, far more than we dream of, and re- 
member that nothing can stop you permanently on 
your way to eternal happiness, which is your heri- 
tage as a God, but which must be earned however. 
Nature never gives something for nothing, but she 
is just, and for every sin she exacts a penalty and 
for every virtuous act gives a reward. According 

245 



246 Man — God's Masterpiece 

to this principle of action and reaction, the greatest 
average happiness would probably be found among 
people of mature years, in normal health, for at that 
period they do not indulge in such extremes but 
attain nearer to a happy medium. Love is the ful- 
filling of the law and brings health, and happiness 
in its train. LaPlace said when dying that " science 
was mere trifling, that nothing was real but love." 
Therefore, love every object, animate or inanimate, 
for you are all derived from the same source and 
the tonic and moral effects of it will be surprising. 
So many have become downcast and counted them- 
selves a failure, whereas, if they only knew, God 
with His infinite wisdom and love at the helm 
working along higher lines had steered their lives 
unknown to them to a successful termination. 

Whatever ill betides you (and this is common to 
all humanity, you are not alone) never lose sight of 
the thought that it can be made beneficial to you. 
Judge every happening from the standpoint of 
character and it will be very pleasing to you to see 
your ideas of life gradually change, for the better, 
seeing good where before you saw evil, and this too 
will affect your health and disposition for the 
better. Do not be disappointed with the position 
you occupy here, however humble. Your oppor- 
tunity, for spiritual advancement, which is all that 
counts, is just as good, if not better than the rich 



Man — God's Masterpiece 247 

man's for wealth counts for nought,* when you pass 
over, and too often proves a curse in more ways 
than one to its owner here. Remember the really 
valuable treasures are spiritual and are without 
price, within the reach of all, yet priceless to their 
possessor. Wealth only becomes a blessing through 
its wise distribution. Its pleasure is greatly en- 
hanced by those who can enter into and enjoy the 
benefits that the recipient himself receives, making 
their pleasure his. This pleasure keeps on increas- 
ing with its healthy reaction, on soul and body as 
a by-product, as it were. On the other hand, many 
who were first here will be last there, and many 
who were last will be first there. The test will be, 
how did we occupy our time here, did it count for 
character or did we waste time in seeking an excess 
of wealth or pleasure? We are working up to a 
grand climax, that of a god, after ages of grovel- 
ling t so let us not complain too much, if our lessons 
seem very hard at times, for the results will well 
repay us, and we have countless centuries to do it 
in. His knowledge is infinite as against our finite, 
w^ho therefore can form the best judgment as to 
our course of education, the Creator who has a plan 
in view, or the object created with its limited vision. 

* And too often takes man away from nature and nat- 
ural living. 

t And the part is a great one and takes cycles of prep- 
aration. 



248 Man — God's Masterpiece 

Every plane through the long cycles of evolution, 
has been a better one for us, a more elevated one. 
Remember it was only a short time ago, counting by 
centuries, when passion rode unbridled and might 
was accounted right; when the people were canaille, 
created for purposes of taxation only (so the rich 
thought), and a thousand perished that a courtezan 
might wear another bauble on her breast. Small 
wonder that for one hundred twenty-six years 
the French sang the Marseillaise, and yearly cele- 
brate the fall of the Bastille. Have faith then 
that the law that has worked for countless ages 
in our favor, still applies (it is unreasonable to 
think otherwise) and that the next world is a most 
decided improvement over this, as God, Christ, the 
greatest minds, and our reasoning faculties assure 
us this is the case. The improvement in this world 
has been great, and it is pleasant to realize that the 
rate of progress will be still more marvelous, not- 
withstanding the dire prognostications of the pessi- 
mist. Civilization has made greater strides in the 
last fifty years than in a thousand years previously. 
Gladstone says that in the first half of the Nine- 
teenth Century there was more wealth accumulated 
than in the previous Eighteen Centuries, and we 
know the accumulations of the last ten years, 1906- 
1916, have been simply marvelous, a far greater 
ratio of increase than previously. Our view points 
have been changing as well. Eighty years ago no 



Man — God's Masterpiece 249 

position of trust was offered to a man who was a 
Prohibitionist — now even the name saloon has been 
dropped, and a row of bottles is no longer displayed, 
to the outside looker-on, as a bait to lure him in. 

The telegraph, the telephone, the wireless, and 
electricity in its various other uses, the pullman 
sleeper, the great tunnels, subways, bridges, the 
auto, the bicycle, aeroplane, the modern locomotive, 
and machinery in general (and others too numerous 
to mention) have all had their inception in the last 
half century, or thereabouts. Freedom of speech, 
of the press, of the pulpit, has been assured to us. 
Religious and social ostracism has passed away, 
together with slavery.* Diptheria which claimed 
eighty-five per cent as victims has reduced its toll to 
ten. Typhoid and yellow fever, black plague, small 
pox, etc., all in their time great scourages are now 
comparatively infrequent and in the large percentage 
of cases curable. War is becoming a thing abhorred 
and the time will not be long when the people will 
deprive the King or Emperor and his ministers of 
the right to embroil the nation. They will demand 
that it be put to the vote of the people. What is 
the exception now and classified as crime was then 
the law of the land. Murder and cannibalism were 

* Buckle's Civilization in England, Vol. 1, part 1, pp. 137, 
138 says that moral feelings have had no share at all in 
the decrease of war, it is all due to the increase of intel- 
lect, the less intellectual the people, the more warlike. 



250 Man — God's Masterpiece 

the proper thing, and long after man has established 
his own rights he conceded none to the woman, his 
former slave, whom he could kill at pleasure as he 
could his children. Even after the old barons had 
relinquished their right to kill their servants or vio- 
late the chastity of their female retainers, they still 
reserved the right to practise summary vengeance 
on their wives. It is only of late years that women 
in many states have had any rights to speak of in the 
estate of their husbands', etc., and these even to-day 
are far more imperfect than the average reader 
thinks for, in some localities. It was only in the 
early part of the last century that there were two 
hundred twenty-three offenses punishable by death 
where to-day in some of our states there are no 
crimes so punishable. '' It is only since the Eight- 
eenth Century and the spread of the theory of equal- 
ity that the father of a family has ceased to consider 
himself as a sort of irresponsible sovereign." * 

When the French Revolutionists did away with 
the torturing of witnesses, many thought that jus- 
tice would be unattainable thereafter. Imprison- 
ment for debt and cannibalism among some of our 
Indians existed here in America, as well as the 
burning and hanging of men and women for witch- 
craft, for continued non-attendance at church and 
other trivial things. But every vestige of these 

* The Non-Religion of the Future, Guyau, p. 207. 



Man — God's Masterpiece 251 

laws has not yet disappeared. It was only re- 
cently that at Paris, Tennessee, two highly respect- 
able Seventh day Adventists were confined forty 
days in jail and then sent out to work on the public 
highway with three negro criminals because they 
observed the sixth day as their Sabbath and worked 
quietly and inoffensively (their neighbors said) on 
the seventh day, and this sentence was ratified by 
the Supreme Court of the state on the ground that 
Christianity was part of the law of the state, and 
the Supreme Court of the United States, while 
stating that they were wrongly convicted, said they 
were powerless to interfere.* No longer do we 
hang men, women and children for stealing a loaf 
of bread, or bury the actress or suicide at the cross 
roads, denying them Christian burial, the latter with 
a stake through his body; as they did in modern 
days in France and England. Plagues, leprosy, 
famine, etc., that swept over Europe wiping out the 
entire population of some cities, are now things of 
the past. The average span of life has been raised 
from eighteen years of age f in the Thirteenth Cen- 
tury and thirty years of age three hundred years 
ago, to the present average of forty-five years.l 

* Signs of the Times, June, 1915, p. 36. 

t So many infants died and famines so frequent. 

t There were nine thousand leprosy establishments in 
Europe alone. Sprengel Histoire de la Medicine, Vol. 2, 
p 374 One famine every fourteen years in the eleventh, 



252 Man — God's Masterpiece 

There is still room for great improvement, but 
it is coming, and faster than ever before, and as we 
reahze more strongly (as we shall) our brotherhood 
with man, all strife between capital and labor, be- 
tween nation and nation, will pass away, and good 
will toward man and universal peace will pervade 
every land, and that perhaps sooner than we think. 
Who can read the history of civilization from the 
earliest period to the present day, and deny the pres- 
ence of an all-conquering power at work through it 
all, which at times seemed almost vanquished by the 
crimes of the age, but which in the end always 
proved successful in elevating the masses (little bet- 
ter than swine originally). All that power we can 
plainly see was exercised by an omnipotent God of 
Love, who still rules and promises endless life and 
happiness to even the vilest sinner amongst us — 
His son and our brother. 

twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Journal of the Statisti- 
cal Society, Vol. 9, pages 159-163, Essay by Farr. 



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